Nanotoxicology using the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis: from developmental toxicity to genotoxicology

Abstract

Concomitant with the fast-growing advances in the synthesis and engineering of colloidal nanocrystals, an urgent evaluation of their toxicity on human beings and environment is strongly encouraged by public health organisations. Despite the in vitro approaches employed for toxicological screening of hazardous compounds, the use of simple and cost-effective living organisms may enormously contribute to solve unanswered questions related to embryotoxic and teratogenic effects of nanomaterials. Here, the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis (Cnidaria, Anthozoa) is presented as a novel model organism to profile bio/non-bio interactions and to show a comprehensive toxicological analysis performed on embryos, larvae and adults treated with fluorescent cadmium-based nanocrystals. Spanning from in vivo biodistribution to molecular investigations, different behaviours and effects depending on the composition and surface coatings are showed. Rod-shaped cadmium selenide/cadmium sulfide (CdSe/CdS) nanocrystals resulted in excellent imaging probes to track N. vectensis development with negligible adverse effects, while spherical CdTe nanocrystals severely impaired embryogenesis, resulting in aberrant phenotypes and deregulation of developmental genes, which raise severe worries for a safe use of this type of nanoparticles for human purposes and environmental contamination.

Keywords::

• Nematostella vectensis
• quantum dots
• quantum rods
• embryotoxicology
• teratogenesis

Acknowledgements

The authors sincerely thank Dr T. Pellegrino (Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy) and A. Quarta (CNR-Nano, Lecce, Italy) for providing CdSe/CdS QRs; A. Rogach and A. Susha (Hong Kong University, Hong Kong) for providing CdTe QDs; G. Marino for technical assistance and A. Tino for fruitful discussions. A special thank is reserved for G. Nolfe (Istituto di Cibernetica “E. Caianiello”, CNR, Pozzuoli, Italy) for help in the statistical analysis of the data. Finally, they thank for the financial supports extended by NanoSciEranet project, NANOTRUCK; Ministry of Foreign Affair Italy – ITALY-ISRAEL Joint Innovation Program for scientific and Technological cooperation in R&D. AA and VM were granted by NANOTRUCK.