Polystyrene Nanoplastics Induce Lung Injury via Activating Oxidative Stress: Molecular Insights from Bioinformatics Analysis

Abstract

(1) Background: Increasing evidence reveals that airborne plastic particles will continue to degrade into nanoplastics which are then inhaled by humans, causing injury to the respiratory system with controversial molecular mechanisms. (2) Methods: We used polystyrene nanoplastics (PS-NPs) as the representative pollutants to explore the inhalation toxicology of nanoplastics and identified the potential mechanism through high-throughput sequencing. (3) Results: PS-NPs inhibited cell viability in a dose-dependent manner and 0 μg/cm2, 7.5 μg/cm2 and 30 μg/cm2 PS-NP-treated groups were selected for RNA-seq. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis suggested that lung injuries caused by PS-NPs were mediated via redox imbalance, which was verified by reactive oxygen species (ROS) staining. Additionally, we obtained ten key transcription factors (TFs) governing differentially expressed genes (DEGs), nine of which were involved in the regulation of oxidative stress. An oxidative stress-associated TF-mRNA regulatory network was constructed on account of the findings above. Further joint analysis with animal experiment data from the GEO database identified a crucial oxidative stress-related molecule, TNFRSF12A. qRT-PCR was performed to confirm the results of RNA-seq. (4) Conclusions: Our study indicates the potential role of oxidative stress in the mechanism of nanoplastics-induced lung injuries, with several key genes being promising targets to analyze in future investigations.