微塑料污染已成为影响全球海洋生态安全与环境健康的重要因素之一。微塑料的特有物化性质决定其能进入各种海洋生物并具有通过食物链在不同营养级生物中分布、蓄积并产生损害的潜能，目前针对性的研究极为缺乏。我们的最新研究发现，食物链传递会影响海洋中外源污染物对生物体的毒性效应，作为海洋污染物的微塑料应不例外。因此，在课题组预实验结果的基础上，本项目提出以滤食性海洋贻贝为中心模式生物，构建微藻-贻贝-蟹三营养级食物链模型，对微塑料经食物链传递过程中水体及生物体的微塑料含量及形态特征进行追踪，结合多生物、多水平标记物的检测体系，了解微塑料在各营养级生物体内的蓄积、迁移、转化过程以及相应的生物效应与潜在机制，为明确食物链传递在海洋微塑料生态效应中所发挥的重要作用，进一步深入了解微塑料的毒性效应与致毒机制，准确评价微塑料对高营养级生物，包括人类的真实健康损害提供科学依据与研究思路。

The enormous plastic-dependence of our society has led to an increase in demand and production of these materials over the last decades. The high consumption patterns of these polymers along with the lack of efficient management policies regarding plastic’s recovery or recycling in many parts of the world, were responsible for the ubiquity of plastic debris in several ecosystem, especially the marine ecosystem, where they can interact with diverse biota. ..Microplastics, in particular, due to their reduced dimensions (diameter<5 mm), can be easily transported by water and become bioavailable for both producers and consumers. Consumption of these tiny plastic particles can not only adversely impact the organisms that ingest them, causing mechanical injury and inflammatory responses, but also provides a viable rout for introduction of some hazardous substances into the aquatic food web. Furthermore, the wide occurrence of microplastis ingestion by edible aquatic fauna possess a potential risk to food safety and human health. However, there are gaps of knowledge on the trophic transfer of microplastics within aquatic food web, as well as from aquatic biota to human beings and the resulting implications for human health. ..Focused on the shorted information on microplastics ingestion & transfer along the food chain, and the risk posed to organisms at different trophic levels, the investigations on the trophic transfer process of microplastics and their ecotoxicological impacts are urgently required. Our preliminary studies indicated that, among diverse marine organisms, marine mussels as a primary consumer to play an important role in xenobiotics transfer through the food chain by linking primary producer with secondary consumer in marine ecosystem. Due to its filter-feeding ingestion and sessile inhabit, mussels can directly take up the microplastics which have been broken down from the popular applied polymer products in water, or indirectly filtered with microalgae as the feeds to be ingested. The digestive procedure of mussels is also capable to turn microplastics into even smaller particles to increase the efficiency of transfer to higher trophic organisms. Therefore, our hypothesis is that microplastics in marine environment can be ingested by the filter process, and then translocated and fragmented through the food chain to cause a serials of detrimental biological impacts in biota at different trophic level. This proposed project is subject to mimic the typical coastal food chain by involving microalgae, mussels and crabs to achieve the following objectives: 1) investigating the ingestion of microplastics in water body by microalgae, mussels and crabs; 2) discovering the uptake, bioaccumulation, biotransfer and potential fragmentation of microplastics in organisms at three trophic levels, through the interaction with water body or the ingestions; 3) examining the potential biological impacts caused by microplastics in different tissues and different organisms applied. The established food chain model, composed with microalgae, mussels and crabs, can be further utilized to characterize the real ecological risk of microplastics to aquatic biota, the potential health risk posed to human through the food chain transfer and outlining promising ears for future research.