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Monday, November 19, 2012

High ordered biomineralization induced by carbon nanoparticles in the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus

Daniela Manno, Elisabetta Carata, Bernadetta A Tenuzzo, Elisa Panzarini, Alessandro Buccolieri, Emanuela Filippo, Marco Rossi, Antonio Serra and Luciana Dini



A surprising and unexpected biomineralization process was observed during toxicological assessment of carbon nanoparticles on Paracentrotus lividus (sea urchin) pluteus larvae. The larvae activate a process of defense against external material, by incorporating the nanoparticles into microstructures of aragonite similarly to pearl oysters. Aiming at a better understanding of this phenomenon, the larvae were exposed to increasing concentrations of carbon nanoparticles and the biomineralization products were analyzed by electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. In order to evaluate the possible influence of Sp-CyP-1 expression on this biomineralization process by larvae, analyses of gene expression (Sp-CyP-1) and calcein labeling were performed. Overall, we report experimental evidence about the capability of carbon nanoparticles to induce an increment of Sp-CyP-1 expression with the consequent activation of a biomineralization process leading to the pr...



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