concentration-dependent, size-independent toxicity of citrate capped aunps in drosophila melanogaster柠檬酸浓度、size-independent毒性的限制aunps在黑腹果蝇.pdfVIP

Concentration-Dependent, Size-Independent Toxicity of Citrate Capped AuNPs in Drosophila melanogaster 1 . 1. 1 1 1 Giuseppe Vecchio * , Antonio Galeone , Virgilio Brunetti , Gabriele Maiorano , Stefania Sabella , 2 1 Roberto Cingolani , Pier Paolo Pompa * 1 Italian Institute of Technology, Center for Bio-Molecular Nanotechnologies@UniLe, Arnesano (Lecce), Italy, 2 Italian Institute of Technology, Central Research Laboratories, Genova, Italy Abstract The expected potential benefits promised by nanotechnology in various fields have led to a rapid increase of the presence of engineered nanomaterials in a high number of commercial goods. This is generating increasing questions about possible risks for human health and environment, due to the lack of an in-depth assessment of the physical/chemical factors responsible for their toxic effects. In this work, we evaluated the toxicity of monodisperse citrate-capped gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) of different sizes (5, 15, 40, and 80 nm) in the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, upon ingestion. To properly evaluate and distinguish the possible dose- and/or size-dependent toxicity of the AuNPs, we performed a thorough assessment of their biological effects, using two different dose-metrics. In the first approach, we kept constant the total surface area of the differently sized AuNPs (Total Exposed Surface area approach, TES), while, in the second approach, we used the same number concentration of the four different sizes of AuNPs (Total Number of Nanoparticles approach, TNN). We observed a significant AuNPs-induced toxicity in vivo, namely a str