Collaborative Research: Understanding "wild-type" nanoplastic uptake in single microalgae cells with fluorescence tracking and computational modeling

塑料产品对我们的日常生活至关重要，并在众多行业中支撑着一个不断扩大的、价值数万亿美元的全球市场。然而，由此产生的塑料废物对环境健康和公共安全构成了新的威胁。大型塑料碎片在环境中逐渐分解成纳米级颗粒，这些超细塑料颗粒的长期影响在很大程度上仍然未知。该项目支持基础研究，以了解环境中纳米塑料颗粒与微生物的相互作用，从而深入了解纳米塑料在人类食物链中的积累。研究小组将结合理论和计算模型与尖端的实验技术来发现颗粒形状，细胞进入过程和细胞反应之间的关系。在纳米生物界面上获得的新知识将使纳米塑料的合理危害和风险评估框架的发展成为可能。该项目的教育活动将激励和培训有竞争力的劳动力，为塑料废物问题制定可持续的解决方案。该项目将通过逐步发展和高度结构化的指导，为研究生和本科生提供多学科和跨机构的研究经验。该团队将在专业会议上创建一个专题讨论会，以促进纳米塑料研究网络的发展。外展的目标是吸引当地的中学生和高中生，并在更广泛的社区提高对全球塑料危机的认识。该项目的目标是在单细胞水平上研究新型环境纳米塑料合成模型与绿色微藻的相互作用，以此为起点，了解它们如何在环境中积累，以及随后人类暴露在哪些环境中。为了解决环境释放纳米塑料的代表性替代品的需求，本研究将创建具有明确的非球形形态和表面增强荧光的聚合物包被纳米晶体。将开发一个微流控平台，用于莱茵衣藻细胞的纳米塑料摄取和毒理学反应的原位和体内实验。该团队将应用膜弹性理论和粗粒度模拟来预测脂质膜在不同长度尺度上对各向异性纳米颗粒的吸附和内化。实验和多尺度建模的整合将允许测试不规则表面形态影响环境纳米塑料的个体摄取和集体内化的关键假设。项目活动将通过协作和结构化的指导整合研究生，以及为本科生提供基于课程的研究经验来完成，特别是那些来自传统上在科学和工程领域代表性不足的群体的学生。该项目的教育部分还将支持在ACS东北地区会议上举办专题研讨会、网络研讨会系列，以及在年度国家工程师周社区日举办塑料污染展览，以吸引纳米塑料的广泛研究和教育社区。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Plastic products are essential for our daily life and underpin an expanding, multi-trillion-dollar global market across numerous industry sectors. However, the resulting plastic waste presents an emerging threat to environmental health and public safety. Large plastic debris gradually breaks down to nanometer-sized particles in the environment and the long-term effects of these ultrafine plastic particles remain largely unknown. This project supports fundamental research to understand the interactions of nanoplastic particles in the environment with microorganisms, which provide insight into the nanoplastic accumulation in the human food chain. The research team will combine theoretical and computational modeling with cutting edge experimental techniques to discover the relationship between particle shape, cellular entry process, and cell responses. This new knowledge gained at the nano-bio interface will enable the development of a rational hazard and risk assessment framework for nanoplastics. The educational activities of this project will motivate and train a competitive workforce for developing sustainable solutions to the plastic waste problem. The project will provide multidisciplinary and inter-institutional research experiences for graduate and undergraduate students via step-wise progression and highly structured mentoring. The team will create a symposium at professional conferences to stimulate growth of a research network on nanoplastics. The goal of the outreach is to engage local middle and high school students and to enhance the awareness of the global plastic crisis in the broader community.The goal of this project is to investigate the interactions of novel synthetic models of environmental nanoplastics with green microalgae on the single-cell level as the starting point to understand how they accumulate in the environment and to which there is subsequent human exposure. To address the need for representative surrogates of environmentally released nanoplastics, this research will create polymer-coated nanocrystals with well-defined non-spherical morphologies and surface enhanced fluorescence. A microfluidic platform will be developed for in situ and in vivo experiments of nanoplastic uptake and toxicological responses of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cells. The team will apply the membrane elasticity theory and coarse-grained simulation to predict adsorption and internalization of anisotropic nanoparticles by lipid membranes on different length scales. The integration of experimentation and multiscale modeling will allow the testing of key hypotheses that irregular surface morphology influences individual uptake and collective internalization of environmental nanoplastics. The project activities will be accomplished by integrating graduate students through collaborative and structured mentoring, as well as by providing course-based research experiences to undergraduate students, particularly those from groups traditionally underrepresented in science and engineering. The educational component of the project will also support the development of a topical symposium at the ACS Northeast Regional Meetings, a webinar series, and a plastic pollution exhibition at the annual National Engineers Week Community Day to engage broad research and education communities around nanoplastics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.