University of Sousse, Laboratory of Agrobiodiversity and Ecotoxicology, Higher Institute of Agronomy, Sousse, Tunisia.
Department of Experimental Medicine, Section Human Physiology and Integrated Biological Functions "F. Bottazzi", University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Naples, Italy.
Environ Pollut. 2022 Jun 1;302:119106. doi: 10.1016/j.envpol.2022.119106. Epub 2022 Mar 3.
Although the hazards of microplastics (MPs) have been quite well explored, the aberrant metabolism and the involvement of the autophagy pathway as an adverse response to environmental MPs in benthic organisms are still unclear. The present work aims to assess the impact of different environmental MPs collected from the south coast of the Mediterranean Sea, composed by polyethylene (PE), polyethylene vinyl acetate (PEVA), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polypropylene (PP) and polyamide (PA) on the metabolome and proteome of the marine polychaete Hediste diversicolor. As a result, all the microplastic types were detected with Raman microspectroscopy in polychaetes tissues, causing cytoskeleton damage and induced autophagy pathway manifested by immunohistochemical labeling of specific targeted proteins, through Tubulin (Tub), Microtubule-associated protein light chain 3 (LC3), and p62 (also named Sequestosome 1). Metabolomics was conducted to further investigate the metabolic alterations induced by the environmental MPs-mixture in polychaetes. A total of 28 metabolites were differentially expressed between control and MPs-treated polychaetes, which showed elevated levels of amino acids, glucose, ATP/ADP, osmolytes, glutathione, choline and phosphocholine, and reduced concentration of aspartate. These novel findings extend our understanding given the toxicity of environmental microplastics and unravel their underlying mechanisms.
尽管微塑料（MPs）的危害已经得到了相当充分的研究，但底栖生物中 MPs 异常代谢以及自噬途径作为对环境 MPs 的不良反应仍不清楚。本研究旨在评估从地中海南海岸收集的不同环境 MPs（包括聚乙烯（PE）、聚乙烯醋酸乙烯酯（PEVA）、低密度聚乙烯（LDPE）、高密度聚乙烯（HDPE）、聚丙烯（PP）和聚酰胺（PA））对海洋多毛类动物 Hediste diversicolor 代谢组和蛋白质组的影响。结果表明，所有类型的微塑料都在用拉曼微光谱技术在多毛类动物组织中被检测到，这导致了细胞骨架的损伤，并通过微管蛋白（Tub）、微管相关蛋白轻链 3（LC3）和 p62（也称为自噬体 1）的免疫组织化学标记诱导了自噬途径。代谢组学进一步研究了环境 MPs 混合物在多毛类动物中引起的代谢变化。在对照组和 MPs 处理组的多毛类动物之间有 28 种代谢物表达差异，表现为氨基酸、葡萄糖、ATP/ADP、渗透调节剂、谷胱甘肽、胆碱和磷酸胆碱水平升高，天冬氨酸浓度降低。这些新发现扩展了我们对环境微塑料毒性的理解，并揭示了它们的潜在机制。
