Abstract
The present study was designed to green synthesize titanium dioxide nanoparticles (G-TiO2 NPs) using Salacia reticulata leaf extract as a reducing and capping agent to assess antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial effects as well as toxicity evaluation in zebrafish. Besides, zebrafish embryos were employed to study the effect of G-TiO2 NPs on embryonic development. Zebrafish embryos were treated with TiO2 as well as G-TiO2 NPs at four different concentrations, i.e., 25, 50, 100, and 200 µg/ml for 24–96-hour post-fertilization (hpf). The SEM analysis of G-TiO2 NPs confirmed that the size was in the range of 32–46 nm and characterized by EDX, X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR, UV–vis spectra. During 24–96-hour post-fertilization (hpf), the results showed that 25–100 µg/ml of TiO2 and G-TiO2 NP instigated developmental acute toxicity in these embryos, causing mortality, hatching delay, and malformation. TiO2 and G-TiO2 NPs exposure induced axis bent, tail bent, spinal cord curvature, yolk-sac, and pericardial edema. Exposure of larvae to the highest concentrations of 200 μg/ml TiO2 and G-TiO2 NPs caused maximum mortality at all time points and reached 70% and 50%, respectively, at 96 hpf. Besides, both TiO2 and G-TiO2 NP revealed antidiabetic and anti-inflammatory effects in vitro. In addition, G-TiO2 NPs exhibited antibacterial effects. Taken together, this study provided a valuable insight into the synthesis of TiO2 NPs using green methods and the synthesized G-TiO2 NPs possess moderate toxicity and potent antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial activities.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the Sri Paramakalyani Centre for Excellence in Environmental Science-Manonmaniam Sundaranar University Research Centre for providing all the facilities to complete this research work. Dr. Abdulrahman Alasmari is grateful to the Deanship of Scientific Research (DSR) at University of Tabuk, Saudi Arabia for its funding of this research through grant no: 0174-1439-S.
Ethical approval
All the animal experiments were carried out in compliance with the standard ethical guidelines and under the control of the Sri Paramakalyani Center for Excellence in Environmental Science-Manonmaniam Sundaranar University of Animal Ethics Committee (Ethical No. BRULAC/SDCH/SIMATS/IAEC/8-2021/083).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.