Abstract
The increasing engineering of biomedical devices and the design of drug-delivery platforms enriched by graphene-based components demand careful investigations of the impact of graphene-related materials (GRMs) on the nervous system. In addition, the enhanced diffusion of GRM-based products and technologies that might favor the dispersion in the environment of GRMs nanoparticles urgently requires the potential neurotoxicity of these compounds to be addressed. One of the challenges in providing definite evidence supporting the harmful or safe use of GRMs is addressing the variety of this family of materials, with GRMs differing for size and chemistry. Such a diversity impairs reaching a unique and predictive picture of the effects of GRMs on the nervous system. Here, by exploiting the thermal reduction of graphene oxide nanoflakes (GO) to generate materials with different oxygen/carbon ratios, we used a high-throughput analysis of early-stage zebrafish locomotor behavior to investigate if modifications of a specific GRM chemical property influenced how these nanomaterials affect vertebrate sensory-motor neurophysiology—exposing zebrafish to GO downregulated their swimming performance. Conversely, reduced GO (rGO) treatments boosted locomotor activity. We concluded that the tuning of single GRM chemical properties is sufficient to produce differential effects on nervous system physiology, likely interfering with different signaling pathways.
Highlights
Introduction iationsThanks to their outstanding chemical and physical properties, graphene-related materials (GRMs) have been exploited in a wide range of applications, including energy storage, electronics, the textile industry and medicine [1,2,3]
We used early-stage zebrafish as a screening tool [20] to investigate whether the degree of thermal reduction of graphene oxide nanoflakes (GO) could affect the functionality of the sensorymotor system and the correlated locomotor behavior
We incubated at a concentration of 100 μg/mL in brief chronic treatments zebrafish larvae with three types of graphene oxide (GO, rGO650 and rGO1000)
Summary
Thanks to their outstanding chemical and physical properties, graphene-related materials (GRMs) have been exploited in a wide range of applications, including energy storage, electronics, the textile industry and medicine [1,2,3]. The potential of these materials in terms of technological innovation is unquestionable, it is expected that the rise in the use of GRMs containing products will increase the dispersion of graphene-based nanoparticles in the environment as outcomes of the production processes and disposal [4]. Due to obvious concerns regarding GRMs impact on health, an increasing number of studies addressed the effects of these nanomaterials on organism physiology [5,6,7] with a focus on the nervous system [8,9,10].
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