Environmental Impact and Sustainability of Nanoparticles
Recent studies show that nanomaterials released into the environment undergo abrupt changes depending on the composition of the environmental medium. Consequently, the nanomaterials—which are often well characterized during industrial production—can only be compared to a limited extent with the nanoparticles found in the environment. In addition to factors such as pH and ionic strength, the presence of proteins in particular has a significant influence on particle properties. Which proteins bind particularly efficiently to which nanoparticles, and how the resulting biomolecular shell—known as the “corona”—is influenced by the physicochemical properties of the nanomaterials, such as size, material, and/or surface properties, is still largely unknown and is currently the subject of intensive research, particularly in the field of human toxicology.
Not only the physiological environment of the human body but also environments relevant to environmental toxicology—such as water bodies or soil—contain various biomolecules. While proteins predominate in human organ systems, environmental matrices are highly complex mixtures consisting of, among other things, organic acids, mono-, di-, and polysaccharides, lipids, amino acids, and proteins. In addition to the physicochemical properties of nanomaterials, which have thus far been used for their biocompatibility and risk assessment, determining the biomolecular corona could provide additional important criteria for evaluating nanomaterials.
It may thus turn out that (eco-)toxicity is not an intrinsic but rather an extrinsic property of the particles, defined by the particle corona and, consequently, by the biomolecules of the corresponding environmental matrix.
In our research, we are investigating the sorption of selected biomolecules onto iron, cerium, silicon, and copper oxide nanoparticles. An important aspect of this is the question of whether adsorbed molecules can be microbially degraded.
This research was supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF-FKZ: 03X0152) as part of the project “Design Criteria for Sustainable Nanomaterials.”
You can find more on this topic in
Bemowsky S., Rother A., Willmann B., Köser J., Markiewicz M., Dringen R., S. Stolte (2019) Quantification and biodegradability assessment of meso-2,3-dimercaptosuccinic acid adsorbed on iron oxide nanoparticles. *Nanoscale Advances*, 1, 3670–3679.
Markiewicz M., Kumirska J., Lynch I., Matzke M., Köser J., Bemowsky S., Docter D., Stauber R., Westmeier D., Stolte S. (2018) Review: Changing environments and biomolecule coronas: Consequences and challenges for the design of environmentally acceptable engineered nanoparticles. Green Chemistry, 20, 4133–4168.
Zhang Y.-Q., Dringen R., Petters C., Rastedt W., Köser J., Filser J., and Stolte S. (2016) Toxicity of dimercaptosuccinate-coated and unfunctionalized magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles to aquatic organisms. Environmental Science Nano, 3, 754–767. Full text available
Docter D., Westmeier D., Markiewicz M., Stolte S., Knauer S.K., and Stauber R.H. (2015) The nanoparticle biomolecule corona: Lessons learned—challenge accepted? Chemical Society Reviews, 44, 6094–6121. Full text available
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