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Yellow perch ( Perca flavescens ) show subtle changes in the cellular stress response following exposure to microplastics in large in-lake mesocosms
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Researchers exposed yellow perch to additive-free and additive-containing microplastic fragments in in-lake mesocosms for nine weeks and found only subtle gene expression changes — upregulation of hsp90aa, mgst1, and mhc-I — without a clear pattern distinguishing chemical from physical toxicity, suggesting additives alone do not dominate the stress response at environmental concentrations.
Microplastics are found worldwide and are ingested by a wide range of organisms, yet the drivers of toxicity of these common environmental contaminants are still not fully understood. To better understand the contribution of plastic additives in the toxicity of microplastics to organisms, yellow perch (Perca flavescens) were exposed for 9 weeks to additive-free or additive-containing microplastics using in-lake pelagic mesocosms. Microplastics were fragments (37 to 1408 µm) of polymers commonly used in consumer plastics (linear low density polyethylene, polystyrene and polyethylene terephthalate). One objective of this work was to understand the contribution of additives to the overall toxicity of microplastics on yellow perch using targeted gene expression analysis via qPCR. After 9 weeks of exposure, fish were sampled and whole fish were assessed for selected metal additives (aluminum (Al), titanium (Ti), and bismuth (Bi)), and liver and gonads were assessed for gene expression analysis. No significant differences of metal contamination in fish tissue exposed to microplastics with additives was detected in comparison with fish exposed to plastic without additives or the control. While only limited effects on gene expression were observed, our work revealed that the genes hsp90aa and mgst1 in livers and mhc-I in gonads were differentially expressed when fish were exposed to microplastics with or without additives in comparison with the control fish. This finding indicated cellular stress and detoxification responses to microplastic exposure. Overall, there was no clear pattern demonstrating that toxic effects on fish were driven by either the physical or chemical aspects of the microplastics. Future work should measure the accumulation of the organic additives and assess the health of organs using histopathology.
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