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A Different Protein Corona Cloaks “True-to-Life” Nanoplastics with Respect to Synthetic Polystyrene Nanobeads
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Researchers produced 'true-to-life' nanoplastics by mechanically fragmenting real plastic products and compared them to the synthetic polystyrene beads typically used in lab studies. The real-world nanoplastics acquired a different protein coating when exposed to biological fluids, suggesting lab studies using synthetic beads may not accurately predict how environmental nanoplastics behave in living systems.
Given the complexity of separating nanoplastics from environmental samples, studies have usually been conducted using synthetic polystyrene nanobeads. By mechanical fragmentation in cryogenic conditions of daily-life plastic items, we produced “true-to-life” nanoplastics (T2LNPs), that promises to give a true insight into the interaction with biological systems. T2LNPs have been fully characterized by Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy and by Atomic Force Microscopy. They result in populations of spheroidal nanoparticles with a broad multimodal size distribution. The mandatory need for a representative sample to evaluate the potential effects of nanoparticles on human health and the environment is demonstrated by the different protein corona identified on T2LNPs and synthetic polystyrene nanobeads upon incubation with human plasma.
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A different protein corona cloaks “true-to-life” nanoplastics with respect to synthetic polystyrene nanobeads
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Researchers found that environmentally realistic 'true-to-life' nanoplastics acquire a distinct protein corona compared to synthetic polystyrene nanobeads, suggesting that laboratory studies using standard nanobeads may not accurately reflect how environmental nanoplastics interact with biological systems.
A Different Protein Corona Cloaks “True-to-Life” Nanoplastics with Respect to Synthetic Polystyrene Nanobeads
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Researchers produced 'true-to-life' nanoplastics by mechanically fragmenting everyday plastic items under cryogenic conditions and found they acquire a distinct protein corona compared to synthetic polystyrene nanobeads, suggesting that lab studies using commercial nanobeads may not accurately represent environmental nanoplastic behavior.
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