Species-specific effects of microplastics on juvenile fishes

Chaonan Zhang; Fei Wang; Qiujie Wang; Jixing Zou; Junjie Zhu

doi:10.3389/fphys.2023.1256005

Species-specific effects of microplastics on juvenile fishes

Front Physiol. 2023 Aug 4:14:1256005. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1256005. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Chaonan Zhang^{1

2

3}, Fei Wang², Qiujie Wang³, Jixing Zou³, Junjie Zhu²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
² National-Local Joint Engineering Laboratory of Aquatic Animal Genetic Breeding and Nutrition, Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Aquatic Resources Conservation and Development, College of Life Science, Huzhou University, Huzhou, China.
³ Joint Laboratory of Guangdong Province and Hong Kong Region on Marine Bioresource Conservation and Exploitation, College of Marine Sciences, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China.

Abstract

Microplastics contamination have been extensively reported in aquatic ecosystem and organisms. It is wildly acknowledged that the ingestion, accumulation and elimination of microplastics in fishes are species-specific, which mainly depending on the feeding behavior. This study aimed to investigate the effects of microplastics on the morphology and inflammatory response in intestines of fishes with different feeding types. Largemouth bass (carnivorous fish), grass carp (herbivorous fish) and Jian carp (omnivorous fish) were used as organism model. The contributing concentration and size of microplastics were explored as well as the response time and legacy effect in fishes. Two different sizes of polystyrene microplastics (80 nm and 8 μm) were set at three concentrations. And samples were analyzed at different exposure times and depuration times. Histological analysis indicated that multiple abnormalities in intestines were presented in three species fishes after acute exposure microplastics. The mRNA abundance of immune-related genes in the intestine tissues of fishes were significantly fluctuant. There were differential expressions of genes coping with differential sizes and concentrations of microplastics exposure in different fishes. The reason for the difference effects of microplastics on fishes was still unclear but could be due to the difference in the structure and function of the digestive system. These results provided a theoretical basis to further analysis of the mechanism of fish intestinal pathology caused by microplastics.

Keywords: gene expression; intestinal morphology; juvenile fish; microplastics; species-specific.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was funded by Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (2019C02082) and Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Province (2021YSZX007 and 2021C02069-2-02).