Elucidating Impact of Engineered Nanoparticles on Microbial Ecology

Understanding impact of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) on our environment is a highly complex topic. Contradictory results have been reported in the literature due to different experimental setups, studying different ENPs having different properties and different environmental matrix. A significant number of laboratory studies in this area has been conducted with unreasonably high ENPs’ concentrations and/or under conditions that do not even slightly represent the real world scenario. Currently, besides investigating effects of ENPs on single microbial strains, we are studying the impact of mixed ENPs on aquatic microbial communities using next generation DNA sequencing and single particle – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS). As shown in Fig. 1 and 2, the bacterial community structure was shifted significantly as a consequence of ENPs’ addition even at environmentally relevant concentrations.

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Fig. 1: Heatmap of an aquatic microbial community

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Fig. 2: NMDS ordination of bacterial community structures

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Collaborators: Dr. Honglan Shi, Missouri University of Science and Technology and Dr. Matthew Geisler, Southern Illinois University Carbondale