Nanoparticle TiO2 size and rutile content impact bioconcentration and biomagnification from algae to daphnia

Little information is available about effect of particle size and crystal structure of nTiO₂ on their trophic transfer. In this study, 5 nm anatase, 10 nm anatase, 100 nm anatase, 20 nm P25 (80% anatase and 20% rutile), and 25 nm rutile nTiO₂ were selected to investigate the effects of size and crystal structure on the toxicity, bioconcentration, and trophic transfer of nTiO₂ to algae and daphnia. In the exposed daphnids, metabolic pathways affected by nTiO₂ and nTiO₂-exposed algae (nTiO₂-algae) were also explored. The 96 h IC₅₀ values of algae and the 48 h LC₅₀ values of daphnia were 10.3, 18.9, 43.9, 33.6, 65.4 mg/L and 10.5, 13.2, 37.0, 28.4, 60.7 mg/L, respectively, after exposed to nTiO₂-5A, nTiO₂-10A, nTiO₂-100A, nTiO₂-P25, and nTiO₂-25R, respectively. The bioconcentration factors (BCFs) for 0.1, 1, and 10 mg/L nTiO₂ in daphnia ranged from 21,220 L/kg to 145,350 L/kg. The nTiO₂ biomagnification factors (BMFs) of daphnia fed with 1 and 10 mg/L nTiO₂-exposed algae were consistently greater than 1.0 (5.7–122). The results show that the acute toxicity, BCF, and BMF all decreased with increasing size or rutile content of nTiO₂. All types of nTiO₂ were largely accumulated in the daphnia gut and were not completely depurated within 24 h. At the molecular level, 22 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) metabolic pathways of daphnia were impacted by the nTiO₂ and nTiO₂-algae treatments, including glutathione metabolism, aminoacyl-tRNA biosynthesis, among others. Six and four KEGG metabolic pathways were significantly disturbed in daphnids exposed to nTiO₂ and nTiO₂-algae, respectively, indicating the presence of algae partially alleviated the negative impact of nTiO₂ on metabolism. These findings increase understanding of the impacts of physicochemical properties of nTiO₂ on the food chain from molecular scale to that of the whole organism, and provide new insight into the ecological effect of nanomaterials.