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

塑料产品是我们日常生活的必需品，支撑着众多行业不断扩大的、价值数万亿美元的全球市场。然而，由此产生的塑料垃圾对环境健康和公共安全构成了新的威胁。大的塑料碎片在环境中逐渐分解成纳米大小的颗粒，这些超细塑料颗粒的长期影响在很大程度上尚不清楚。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。研究小组将把理论和计算建模与尖端实验技术相结合，以发现颗粒形状、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这一新知识将使开发一个合理的纳米塑料危害和风险评估框架成为可能。该项目的教育活动将激励和培训一支有竞争力的劳动力队伍，为塑料废物问题制定可持续的解决方案。该项目将通过循序渐进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研讨会，以刺激纳米塑料研究网络的增长。外展的目的是让当地的初中生和高中生参与进来，并提高更广泛的社区对全球塑料危机的认识。该项目的目标是在单细胞水平上调查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，以及随后人类将暴露在哪些环境中。为了满足环境释放纳米塑料的代表性替代品的需求，这项研究将创造具有明确非球形形貌和表面增强荧光的聚合物涂层纳米晶。将开发一个微流控平台，用于原位和体内实验纳米塑料摄取和莱茵衣藻细胞的毒理学反应。该团队将应用膜弹性理论和粗粒度模拟来预测不同长度尺度的脂膜对各向异性纳米颗粒的吸附和内化。实验和多尺度模型的结合将允许检验关键假设，即不规则表面形态影响环境纳米塑料的个人吸收和集体内化。项目活动将通过协作和有组织的指导来整合研究生，并通过向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较低的群体的学生。该项目的教育部分还将支持在美国癌症学会东北地区会议上举办的专题研讨会、网络研讨会系列和一年一度的全国工程师周社区日上的塑料污染展览，以吸引广泛的纳米塑料研究和教育社区。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.