Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA; Cancer Center at Illinois, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA; Biomedical Research Center, Mills Breast Cancer Institute, Carle Foundation Hospital, Urbana, IL, USA.
School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
J Hazard Mater. 2023 Aug 15;456:131672. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2023.131672. Epub 2023 May 22.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as a group of environmentally persistent synthetic chemicals has been widely used in industrial and consumer products. Bioaccumulation studies have documented the adverse effects of PFAS in various living organisms. Despite the large number of studies, experimental approaches to evaluate the toxicity of PFAS on bacteria in a biofilm-like niche as structured microbial communities are sparse. This study suggests a facile approach to query the toxicity of PFOS and PFOA on bacteria (Escherichia coli K12 MG1655 strain) in a biofilm-like niche provided by hydrogel-based core-shell beads. Our study shows that E. coli MG1655 upon complete confinement in hydrogel beads exhibit altered physiological characteristics of viability, biomass, and protein expression, compared to their susceptible counterpart cultivated under planktonic conditions. We find that soft-hydrogel engineering platforms may provide a protective role for microorganisms from environmental contaminants, depending on the size or thickness of the protective/barrier layer. We expect our study to provide insights on the toxicity of environmental contaminants on organisms under encapsulated conditions that could potentially be useful for toxicity screening and in evaluating ecological risk of soil, plant, and mammalian microbiome.
全氟和多氟烷基物质（PFAS）作为一组环境持久性合成化学品，已广泛应用于工业和消费产品中。生物累积研究记录了 PFAS 在各种生物体内的不良影响。尽管有大量的研究，但在生物膜样小生境中评估 PFAS 对细菌毒性的实验方法仍然很少。本研究提出了一种简便的方法，用于查询水凝胶核壳珠提供的生物膜样小生境中 PFOS 和 PFOA 对细菌（大肠杆菌 K12 MG1655 菌株）的毒性。我们的研究表明，与在浮游条件下培养的敏感对照相比，完全限制在水凝胶珠内的大肠杆菌 MG1655 表现出存活、生物量和蛋白质表达的生理特性发生改变。我们发现，软水凝胶工程平台可能为微生物提供免受环境污染物侵害的保护作用，具体取决于保护/屏障层的大小或厚度。我们预计我们的研究将为研究环境污染物对生物体内的毒性提供见解，这些见解可能有助于毒性筛选，并评估土壤、植物和哺乳动物微生物组的生态风险。
