College of Hydrology and Water Resources, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China.
Jiangsu Environmental Engineering Technology Co., Ltd., Nanjing 210036, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 27;19(15):9148. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159148.
Recently, there is an increasing concern regarding the toxicity of nanoplastics (NPs) on freshwater organisms. However, knowledge about the potential impacts of NPs with different surface modification on freshwater biofilms is still very limited. In this research, biofilms were cultured in lab and exposed to nano polystyrene (PS) beads: non-functionalized PS NPs, PS-COOH NPs, and the carbon source utilization of biofilms were measured by BIOLOG ECO microplates. The results showed that both two types of PS NPs significantly reduced the total carbon metabolic activity of biofilms, compared with the controls, whereas the carbon metabolic rate increased notably, especially for the PS-COOH NPs treatments at day 14. Moreover, results from six categories of carbon sources analysis suggested that PS NPs with different surface chemical properties exhibit distinct effects on the carbon utilization of biofilms, and the divergent changes of the specific carbon source category were observed at day 21 from the two PS NPs treatments. In addition, the metabolic functional diversity of biofilms were not altered by the PS NPs treatments. These findings highlighted that chemical properties of NPs play an important role in the toxic effects on the carbon metabolism activities of the biofilms. This study offers new insights that nanoplastics of different chemical characteristics have the ability to affect the microbial-mediated carbon cycling process in aquatic ecosystems.
最近，人们越来越关注纳米塑料（NPs）对淡水生物的毒性。然而，关于具有不同表面修饰的 NPs 对淡水生物膜潜在影响的知识仍然非常有限。在这项研究中，在实验室中培养生物膜，并将其暴露于纳米聚苯乙烯（PS）珠中：非功能化 PS NPs、PS-COOH NPs，并通过 BIOLOG ECO 微孔板测量生物膜的碳源利用情况。结果表明，与对照组相比，两种 PS NPs 都显著降低了生物膜的总碳代谢活性，而碳代谢率显著增加，尤其是在 PS-COOH NPs 处理的第 14 天。此外，来自 6 种碳源分析的结果表明，具有不同表面化学性质的 PS NPs 对生物膜的碳利用表现出不同的影响，并且在第 21 天从两种 PS NPs 处理中观察到特定碳源类别的不同变化。此外，PS NPs 处理并没有改变生物膜的代谢功能多样性。这些发现强调了 NPs 的化学性质在影响生物膜碳代谢活性的毒性作用中起着重要作用。本研究提供了新的见解，即具有不同化学特征的纳米塑料具有影响水生生态系统中微生物介导的碳循环过程的能力。
