Comprehensive phenotyping and transcriptome profiling to study nanotoxicity in C. elegans

Charles Viau; Orçun Haçariz; Farial Karimian; Jianguo Xia

doi:10.7717/peerj.8684

Comprehensive phenotyping and transcriptome profiling to study nanotoxicity in C. elegans

PeerJ. 2020 Feb 27:8:e8684. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8684. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Charles Viau^#¹, Orçun Haçariz^#¹, Farial Karimian¹, Jianguo Xia^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Parasitology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
² Department of Animal Science, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Engineered nanoparticles are used at an increasing rate in both industry and medicine without fully understanding their impact on health and environment. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a suitable model to study the toxic effects of nanoparticles as it is amenable to comprehensive phenotyping, such as locomotion, growth, neurotoxicity and reproduction. In this study, we systematically evaluated the effects of silver (Ag) and five metal oxide nanoparticles: SiO₂, CeO₂, CuO, Al₂O₃ and TiO₂. The results showed that Ag and SiO₂ exposures had the most toxic effects on locomotion velocity, growth and reproduction, whereas CeO₂, Al₂O₃ and CuO exposures were mostly neurotoxic. We further performed RNAseq to compare the gene expression profiles underlying Ag and SiO₂toxicities. Gene set enrichment analyses revealed that exposures to Ag and SiO₂consistently downregulated several biological processes (regulations in locomotion, reproductive process and cell growth) and pathways (neuroactive ligand-receptor interaction, wnt and MAPK signaling, etc.), with opposite effects on genes involved in innate immunity. Our results contribute to mechanistic insights into toxicity of Ag and SiO₂ nanoparticles and demonstrated that C. elegans as a valuable model for nanotoxicity assessment.

Keywords: Ag; Growth Inhibition; Locomotion Velocity; Nanoparticles; Neurotoxicity; RNAseq; Reproduction; SiO2; C. elegans.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies (FQRNT), Genome Canada, Genome Quebec and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.