Environmentally relevant concentrations of microplastics modulated the immune response and swimming activity, and impaired the development of marine medaka Oryzias melastigma larvae

Microplastics (MPs), due to their impacts on the ecosystem and their integration into the food web either through trophic transfer or ingestion directly from the ambient environment, are an emerging class of environmental contaminants posing a great threat to marine organisms. Most reports on the toxic effects of MPs exclusively focus on bioaccumulation, oxidative stress, pathological damage, and metabolic disturbance in fish. However, the collected information on fish immunity in response to MPs is poorly defined. In particular, little is known regarding mucosal immunity and the role of mucins. In this study, marine medaka (Oryzias melastigma) larvae were exposed to 6.0 µm beads of polystyrene microplastics (PS-MPs) at three environmentally relevant concentrations (10² particles/L, 10⁴ particles/L, and 10⁶ particles/L) for 14 days. The experiment was carried out to explore the developmental and behavioural indices, the transcriptional profiles of mucins, pro-inflammatory, immune, metabolism and antioxidant responses related genes, as well as the accumulation of PS-MPs in larvae. The results revealed that PS-MPs were observed in the gastrointestinal tract, with a concentration- and exposure time-dependent manner. No significant difference in the larval mortality was found between the treatment groups and the control, whereas the body length of larvae demonstrated a significant reduction at 10⁶ particles/L on 14 days post-hatching. The swimming behaviour of the larvae became hyperactive under exposure to 10⁴ and 10⁶ particles/L PS-MPs. In addition, PS-MP exposure significantly up-regulated the mucin gene transcriptional levels of muc7-like and muc13-like, however down-regulated the mucin gene expression levels of heg1, muc2, muc5AC-like and muc13. The immune- and inflammation and metabolism-relevant genes (jak, stat-3, il-6, il-1β, tnf-а, ccl-11, nf-κb, and sod) were significantly induced by PS-MPs at 10⁴ and 10⁶ particles/L compared to the control. Taken together, this study suggests that PS-MPs induced inflammation response and might obstruct the immune functions and retarded the growth of the marine medaka larvae even at environmentally relevant concentrations.