Microplastics negatively impact embryogenesis and modulate the immune response of the marine medaka Oryzias melastigma

11 Pág.

Microplastic (MP) pollution is an emerging contaminant in aquatic environments worldwide. Nonetheless, the developmental toxicity of MPs in the early life stages of fish and the mechanisms involved are not yet fully understood. The present study investigated the effects of different concentrations of polystyrene (PS) MPs on the early development of the marine model fish the medaka Oryzias melastigma. Our results showed that waterborne exposure to PS MPs significantly delayed the hatching time, altered the heartbeat and decreased the hatching rate of embryos. Furthermore, the genes involved in cardiac development, encoding for embryo-hatching enzymes, as well as inflammatory responses were significantly upregulated. The transcriptome results showed that mainly the pathways involved in metabolism, immune response, genetic information processing and diseases were significantly enriched. These results demonstrate that PS MPs negatively impact embryogenesis and the immune response of O. melastigma.

This work was sponsored by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2019YFD0901101 ), the Scientific Research Foundation of the Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources (No. 2012019 and 2018019 ), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41977211 ), the National Program on Global Change and Air-Sea Interaction ( GASI-02-SCS-YDsum ) and the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration . CB was supported SNF Post Doc Mobility Fellowship number P400PB_183824 . The authors would like to thank Chen Hui-Yun (Xiamen University) for the assistance in confocal imaging and Johanna Croton for improving the English.

Peer reviewed