Oral magnetite nanoparticles disturb the development of Drosophila melanogaster from oogenesis to adult emergence

Abstract

The potential impacts of nanomaterials (NMs) on fetal development have attracted great concerns because of the increased potential exposure to NMs during pregnancy. Drosophila melanogaster oogenesis and developmental transitions may provide an attractive system to study the biological and environmental effects of NMs on the embryonic development. In this study, the effects of three types of magnetite (Fe₃O₄) nanoparticles (MNPs): UN-MNPs (pristine), CA-MNPs (citric acid modified) and APTS-MNPs (3-aminopropyltriethoxylsilane coated) on the development of Drosophila at 300 and 600 μg/g dosage were studied. The uptake of MNPs by female and male flies caused obvious reduction in the female fecundity, and the developmental delay at the egg–pupae and pupae–adult transitions, especially in those treated by the positive APTS-MNPs. Further investigation demonstrates that the parental uptake of MNPs disturbs the oogenesis period, induces ovarian defect, reduces the length of eggs, decreases the number of nurse cells and delays egg chamber development, which may contribute to the decrease of fecundity of female Drosophila and the development delay of their offspring. Using the synchrotron radiation-based micro-X-ray fluorescence (SR-μXRF), the dyshomeostasis of trace elements such as Fe, Ca and Cu along the anterior–posterior axis of the fertilized eggs was found, which may be an important reason for the development delay of Drosophila.

• Developmental delay
• Drosophila melanogaster, elements dyshomeostasis, magnetite nanoparticles, oogenesis

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest.

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program (973 program: 2011CB933403 and 2010CB934004) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11275214 and 11375211) and Program of Changjiang Scholar and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT13049).

Supplementary material available online Supplementary Figure S1–S5