Nanotox: Biochemical, Molecular and Cellular Responses of Zebrafish Exposed to Metallic Nanoparticles

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0540920 Barber The proposal is concerned with biological, histological and molecular studies of toxic effects of metal nanoparticles on zebrafish. The fish will be exposed for 96 hours to aqueous suspensions of aluminum, silver, nickel, and titania nanoparticles of various concentrations. Toxicity effects will be evaluated at the morphological, biochemical and molecular levels in gills, liver, intestine, and kidney tissues. One of the main objectives is to compare toxicity of metals in the dissolved and nanoparticle state as well as the nanoparticles of different sizes and shape. The hypothesis is that the metal nanoparticles will produce toxic effects that are different from that of metals in aqueous solution. The proposal will take advantage of newly arriving zebrafish microarrays to characterize gene expression at different treatment levels, followed by quantitative PCR of the 15 most prominent genes. An in vitro model system will also be tested as an alternative for a toxicity assay of metal nanoparticles in aquatic species.