Preliminary Study On Oxidative Stress Mechanism Of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles To Zebra Fish Embryos

With the rapid development of nanotechnology, engineered nanomaterials have been widely applied both in daily life and industry products. Simultaneously, there would be more and more chances for engineered nanomaterials to enter ecological environment or organism, which may have potential hazard for the environment and human health due to its unique physchem properties, that iswhy bio-security issues of nano-materials have attracted extraordinary attention ofgovernments and academic. As a kind of importance engineered nanomaterials, ZnO nanoparticles (nZnO) are widely applied in many difference fields, so it is extremely possible for nZnO to leak to water environment in its life cycle and the growth and reproduction of organisms could be affected.In this study, Zebrafish embryo was adopted as a model to evaluate the toxicity of nano-ZnO, and the toxic mechanism of nano-ZnO was discussed. The oxidative stress levels were determined through the intracellular levels of glutathione (GSH), superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, Catalase activity (CAT) and malondialdehyde (MDA) respectively. Nano ZnO (30nm) solution impacted their antioxidant system .The genetoxic effect was evaluated by the detecting of DNA damage through comet assay. The results showed that exposure of zinc oxide lead to intracellular oxidative stress, including reduction of GSH, decrease of SOD activity, decrease of CAT activity and increase of MDA production. At the same time, serious DNA damage had also been observed. It can be inferred that oxidative stress induced by zinc oxide nanoparticles may be one of the main cause of toxic effects to embryo.