Engineered nanomaterials have complex structures and system-dependent properties.  Current limits of instrumentation prevent complete characterization of nanomaterials as they exist in aqueous suspensions or biological media.  Together, this makes it difficult to understand how nanomaterial structure and resulting properties invokes specific biological responses. In this work, a data visualization tool was developed to explore the results of 151 zebrafish assays stored in the Nanomaterial-Biological Interactions Knowledgebase. The visualizations generated using the tool were used to indicate which properties or combinations of nanomaterial properties tended to cause death, and which led to sublethal abnormalities. The visualizations indicated that combinations of characteristics, such as the material of the core, shell, and surface, more than any individual characteristic, influenced toxicity. Notably, the size of the nanoparticle did not appear significant in determining toxicity across these studies. There was an indication that surface charge could affect toxicity, but a distinct relationship between charge and biological response was not identified. Through exploration of the Knowledgebase using the tool, it was determined that it is possible to alter the toxicity of a nanomaterial of a certain core composition by adding different combinations of a shell and/or a functional outer surface, suggesting that proper design choices, as required to achieve a specific function of a material, could mitigate or exacerbate toxicity.  Future work in the Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT) will explore similar visualization tools for data related to environmental fate and effects.

Data visualization tool for exploring how nanomaterial properties correlate with toxicity in zebrafish assays

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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