Polystyrene Nanoplastics Increase Macrophage Bactericidal Activity Through a Mechanism Involving Reactive Oxygen Species and Itaconate
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nanoplastics are persistent environmental pollutants with potential risks to human health. Due to their small size nanoplastics are internalized by macrophages, potentially altering their function. In this study, we investigated the intracellular localization of polystyrene nanoplastics inside macrophages using confocal immunofluorescence microscopy. We observed their presence predominantly in endosomes, lysosomes, and in the endoplasmic reticulum. We next showed that internalization of polystyrene nanoplastics increases the bactericidal activity of macrophages, which was inhibited by the NADPH oxidase in-hibitor diphenyleneiodonium. Consistently, flow cytometry analysis using CellROX as well as MitoSOX revealed that polystyrene nanoplastics induce reactive oxygen species production in macrophages. In contrast, internalization of polystyrene nanoplastics re-duced the levels of nitric oxide released by macrophages in response to E. coli. We also investigated the impact of polystyrene nanoplastics on the expression of Acod1, a gene encoding for aconitate decarboxylase 1 which is responsible for the production of the mitochondrial metabolite itaconate. Internalization of polystyrene nanoplastics followed by the addition of E. coli induced high levels of Acod1 expression. In the absence of Acod1, the ability of macrophages exposed to polystyrene nanoplastics to kill E. coli was signif-icantly reduced with respect to control macrophages, indicating a role for itaconate in the increased bactericidal activity of macrophages exposed to polystyrene nanoplastics. Collectively, our results indicate that exposure of macrophages to polystyrene nanoplastics increases their bactericidal activity through the production of reactive oxygen species and of itaconate.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".