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Evolutionarily conserved mucus-mediated nanoplastic bioflocculation in Tetrahymena
Summary
Scientists discovered that a tiny single-celled organism called Tetrahymena, common in water environments, can trap and clump together nanoplastics using a mucus-like secretion, pulling nearly half of these particles out of the water and settling them to the bottom instead of letting them float away. This matters because nanoplastics are turning up everywhere—including in our food and water—and this finding suggests nature may already have a built-in way to reduce how far these pollutants spread, which could help scientists better predict and manage plastic pollution risks to ecosystems and, potentially, human exposure.
Nanoplastics (NPs), pervasive environmental pollutants with elevated toxicity and stability, present critical remediation challenges due to the inefficiency of conventional methods. Here, we reveal a protozoan bioflocculation pathway in Tetrahymena that effectively sequesters NPs and fundamentally reshapes their environmental fate. Upon NP exposure, Tetrahymena activates a Ca-dependent mucus secretion mechanism, driving nano-scale aggregation that reduces aqueous NP concentrations by 41.6%-44.8% and enriches sedimentary sinks. Critically, this biotic process mitigates atmospheric dispersion risks, compelling revision of current NP fate models that neglect biological interactions. Multi-omics analyses identify Ca-mediated GRL secretion dynamics associated with this bioflocculation response in Tetrahymena. This mechanism represents a Ca-mediated defensive response observed in Tetrahymena, which may also occur in related species but requires further investigation across other protist taxa. These findings underscore the critical, underappreciated role of protozoa in pollutant mitigation and necessitate updates to global frameworks for projecting NP transport, abundance and ecological risk.