Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles Altered the lncRNA Expression Profile in Human Lung Cells

Ying Ma; Jiaqi Shi; Yi Zhang; Zhangjian Chen; Guang Jia

doi:10.3390/ijerph20021059

Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles Altered the lncRNA Expression Profile in Human Lung Cells

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jan 6;20(2):1059. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20021059.

Authors

Ying Ma^{1

2}, Jiaqi Shi^{1

2}, Yi Zhang^{1

2}, Zhangjian Chen^{1

2}, Guang Jia^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.
² Beijing Key Laboratory of Toxicological Research and Risk Assessment for Food Safety, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing 100191, China.

Abstract

Respiration is considered to be the main occupational or environmental exposure pathway of titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO₂ NPs), and the lung is considered to be the target organ of respiratory exposure; however, the mechanism of respiratory toxicity is not fully understood. In this study, the effect of TiO₂ NPs on the expression profile of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) in bronchial epithelial cells (BEAS-2B) was investigated to understand their potential toxic mechanism. BEAS-2B cells were treated with 100 μg/mL TiO₂ NPs for 48 h, then RNA sequencing was performed to screen the differential lncRNAs compared with the control group, and the enrichment pathways of the differentially expressed lncRNAs were further analyzed using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). The results identified a total of 45,769 lncRNAs, and 277 different lncRNAs were screened. KEGG pathway analysis showed that the targeted mRNAs of these different lncRNAs were enriched in the pyrimidine metabolism pathway. This work demonstrates that TiO₂ NPs could alter the lncRNA expression profile in BEAS-2B cells, and epigenetics may play a role in the mechanism of respiratory toxicity induced by TiO₂ NPs.

Keywords: BEAS-2B cells; epigenetics; lncRNA; respiratory toxicity; titanium dioxide nanoparticles.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Humans
Lung
Nanoparticles* / toxicity
RNA, Long Noncoding* / genetics
Titanium / toxicity

Substances

titanium dioxide
RNA, Long Noncoding
Titanium

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 81703257 and National Key R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, grant number 2017YFC1600200.