Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University, Leiden 2300 RA, the Netherlands.
School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment Monitoring and Pollution Control, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, PR China.
Environ Int. 2023 Jul;177:108025. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2023.108025. Epub 2023 Jun 9.
Research on theoretical prediction methods for the mixture toxicity of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) faces significant challenges. The application of in silico methods based on machine learning is emerging as an effective strategy to address the toxicity prediction of chemical mixtures. Herein, we combined toxicity data generated in our lab with experimental data reported in the literature to predict the combined toxicity of seven metallic ENPs for Escherichia coli at different mixing ratios (22 binary combinations). We thereafter applied two machine learning (ML) techniques, support vector machine (SVM) and neural network (NN), and compared the differences in the ability to predict the combined toxicity by means of the ML-based methods and two component-based mixture models: independent action and concentration addition. Among 72 developed quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models by the ML methods, two SVM-QSAR models and two NN-QSAR models showed good performance. Moreover, an NN-based QSAR model combined with two molecular descriptors, namely enthalpy of formation of a gaseous cation and metal oxide standard molar enthalpy of formation, showed the best predictive power for the internal dataset (R = 0.911, adjusted R = 0.733, RMSE = 0.091, and MAE = 0.067) and for the combination of internal and external datasets (R = 0.908, adjusted R = 0.871, RMSE = 0.255, and MAE = 0.181). In addition, the developed QSAR models performed better than the component-based models. The estimation of the applicability domain of the selected QSAR models showed that all the binary mixtures in training and test sets were in the applicability domain. This study approach could provide a methodological and theoretical basis for the ecological risk assessment of mixtures of ENPs.
研究工程纳米粒子(ENP)混合物毒性的理论预测方法面临着重大挑战。基于机器学习的计算方法的应用正成为解决化学混合物毒性预测的有效策略。在此,我们结合了实验室产生的毒性数据和文献中报道的实验数据,预测了七种金属 ENP 在不同混合比(22 种二元组合)下对大肠杆菌的联合毒性。然后,我们应用了两种机器学习(ML)技术,支持向量机(SVM)和神经网络(NN),并通过基于 ML 的方法和两种基于成分的混合物模型(独立作用和浓度加和)来比较预测联合毒性的能力差异。在 ML 方法开发的 72 个定量构效关系(QSAR)模型中,两个 SVM-QSAR 模型和两个 NN-QSAR 模型表现出良好的性能。此外,一个基于 NN 的 QSAR 模型与两个分子描述符(气态阳离子形成焓和金属氧化物标准摩尔生成焓)相结合,对内部数据集(R=0.911,调整 R=0.733,RMSE=0.091,MAE=0.067)和内部和外部数据集的组合(R=0.908,调整 R=0.871,RMSE=0.255,MAE=0.181)具有最佳的预测能力。此外,开发的 QSAR 模型的性能优于基于成分的模型。所选 QSAR 模型适用性域的估计表明,训练集和测试集中的所有二元混合物都在适用性域内。本研究方法可为 ENP 混合物的生态风险评估提供方法学和理论基础。