Book with abstracts from the COST Action 0905 meeting in ... - UMB

PHYSIOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION AND TRANSCRIPTION
ANALYSIS OF TWO ARABIDOPSIS MUTANTS RESISTANT TO CDS
NANOPARTICLES
Marta Marmiroli, Luca Pagano, Maria Luisa Savo Sardaro, Nelson Marmiroli
Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Parma, Parma, Italy. Viale G.P.
Usberti 33/A, 43124 Parma, Italy. Tel: 00390521905687. E-mail: marta.marmiroli@unipr.it
Keywords: Arabidopsis thaliana, CdS nanoparticles, microarray, resistance, transposon
mutation.
Nanoparticles have become widely used materials because of their unique structural, optic,
electromagnetic and reactive properties. CdS quantum-dots are utilized in miniaturised
hardware and optics equipment, they are synthesized through an inexpensive wet-chemistry
process, and have a diameter of 5 nm. The CdS NPs small size make them particularly prone
to enter in human and plant cells, but their toxicity potential has not been assessed yet. In this
study we screened two mutagenised collections of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) Heynh, to
identify CdS NPs resistant individuals; we recognised two: Atnp01 and Atnp02, resistant to
lethal concentration (for the wild type) of NPs. They showed the higher photosynthetic and
respiration efficiency in the presence of the contaminant. We determined the integrity of the
inserted Ac/Ds transposon, the number of transposon copies, and their positions within the
genome of each mutant. We identified two putative insertions for Atnp01 and one for Atnp02.
The next steps were the expression analysis of genes visited by the Ds element and the whole
genome effects on the transcription using Real-Time PCR and Affymetrix microarray
approaches. The relevance of the results will be discussed in the context of developing a risk
assessment procedure for nanoparticles based on the model plant A.thaliana.