Transcriptomics and Metabolomics Revealed the Biological Response of <i>Chlorella pyrenoidesa</i> to Single and Repeated Exposures of AgNPs at Different Concentrations
Manman Cao, Xitong Huang, Fei Wang, Yiyue Zhang, Beihai Zhou, Huilun Chen, Rongfang Yuan, Shuai Ma, Huanhuan Geng, Dan Xu, Changchun Yan, Baoshan Xing
Abstract
cells exposed to AgNPs had several significant alterations in metabolic process and cellular transcription. Most of the genes and metabolites are altered in a dose-dependent manner. Compared with the control group, single exposure had more differential genes and metabolites than repeated exposures. 562, 1341, 4014, 227, 483, and 2409 unigenes were differentially expressed by 1-0.5-AgNPs, 1-5-AgNPs, 1-10-AgNPs, 3-0.5-AgNPs, 3-5-AgNPs, and 3-10-AgNPs treatment groups compared with the control. Metabolomic analyses revealed that AgNPs altered the levels of sugars and amino acids, suggesting that AgNPs reprogrammed carbon/nitrogen metabolism. The changes of genes related to carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism, such as citrate synthase (CS), isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH1), and malate dehydrogenase (MDH), further supported these results. These findings elucidated the mechanism of biological responses to repeated exposures to AgNPs, providing a new perspective on the risk assessment of nanomaterials.