Polystyrene nanoplastics drive regime-dependent molecular non-additivity in heat-stressed rice

Summary

Researchers exposed heat-stressed rice to polystyrene nanoplastics and found that while biomass reductions were additive, the molecular responses were highly non-additive—nanoplastics suppressed about half of the plant's heat-acclimation gene program under chronic heat and disrupted circadian clock splicing under acute heat, revealing that organism-level measurements alone can miss significant molecular disruption.