On January 29, Anna Laromaine and Amanda Muñoz attended the Second BAR Meeting about C. elegans. Barcelona-based community of experts on the small worm met in the Bocconcino bar to talk about their research and experience in an informal setting.
6th of December 2018 the first edition of the book entitled “Nanomaterials for Magnetic and Optical Hyperthermia Applications” was published by Elsevier. This book focuses on the design, fabrication and characterization of nanomaterials for in vitro and in applications. Anna Laromaine, researcher at the N&N group, and Laura González-Moragas, graduated PhD student at the N&N group, are coauthors of the chapter nine included in this book: Invertebrate Models for Hyperthermia: What We Learned From Caenorhabditis elegans and Hydra vulgaris.
This spring we have a new member in the N&N group: Gerrit, from Germany!
Hi, my name is Gerrit and I’m a master’s student of toxicology from Düsseldorf, Germany. In 2016, I got my bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical chemistry in Cologne. Now, I am glad to enter the Group of Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites for an internship of six months under the supervision of Dr. Anna Laromaine. My topic will be the investigation of the effects of cellulose on the nematode C. elegansand vice versa. I’m looking forward to meeting you!
Good luck with your project Gerrit and we all hope you enjoy your time at the N&N group!
Last week, our group members Luo Zhongrui, Genís Rabost and Anna Laromaine worked on the beam line MIRAS at the synchrothron ALBA in collaboration with Núria Benseny. We visualized C. elegans by FTIR and analyzed their tissues. They also had the visit of a former group member Laura Gonzalez-Moragas, who started this research line.
Here you can read the abstract of the paper:
We present a mechanistic study of the effect of iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) in C. elegans combining a genome-wide analysis with the investigation of specific molecular markers frequently linked to nanotoxicity. The effects of two different coatings were explored: citrate, an anionic stabilizer, and bovine serum albumin, as a pre-formed protein corona. The transcriptomic study identified differentially expressed genes following an exposure to SPIONs. The expression of genes involved in oxidative stress, metal detoxification response, endocytosis, intestinal integrity and iron homeostasis was quantitatively evaluated. The role of oxidative stress was confirmed by gene expression analysis and by synchrotron Fourier Transform infrared microscopy based on the higher tissue oxidation of NP-treated animals. The observed transcriptional modulation of key signaling pathways such as MAPK and Wnt suggests that SPIONs might be endocytosed by clathrin-mediated processes, a putative mechanism of nanotoxicity which deserves further mechanistic investigations.
Citation: Toxicogenomics of iron oxide nanoparticles in the nematode C. elegans Laura Gonzalez-Moragas, Si-Ming Yu, Núria Benseny-Cases, Stephen Stürzenbaum, Anna Roig and Anna Laromaine Nanotoxicology, Accepted manuscript online: 15 Jun 2017. DOI: 10.1080/17435390.2017.1342011
On Monday 8th of May, Natascia Vetura will give a seminar entitled:”C. elegans as screening tool to identify environmentally related nanomaterials targeting mitochondria“.The talk will take place in the Sala d’actes Carles Miravitlles at ICMAB. the seminar is organized by Anna Laromaine from the N&N group.
Natascia’s lab is interested in understanding the role of mitochondria in environmentally induced neuronal aging and diseases. To this end, Ventura’s team exploits C. elegans as a powerful genetic and screening tool to evaluate materials and chemical and unravel molecular mechanisms of mitochondria-associated diseases, with special attention revolved to the crosstalk between genetic and environmental interventions.
Abstract: Understanding the in vivo fate and transport of nanoparticles (NPs) is challenging, but critical. We review recent studies of metal and metal oxide NPs using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans, summarizing major findings to date. In a joint transdisciplinary effort, we highlight underutilized opportunities offered by powerful techniques lying at the intersection of mechanistic toxicology and materials science. To this end, we firstly summarize the influence of exposure conditions (media, duration, C. elegans lifestage) and NP physicochemical properties (size, coating, composition) on the response of the worm to NP treatment.
Next, we focus on the techniques employed to study NP entrance route, uptake, biodistribution and fate, emphasizing the potential of extending the toolkit available with novel and powerful techniques. Next, we review findings on several NP-induced biological responses, namely transport routes and altered molecular pathways, and illustrate the molecular biology and genetic strategies applied, critically reviewing their strengths and weaknesses.
Finally, we advocate the incorporation of a set of minimal materials and toxicological science experiments that will permit meta-analysis and synthesis of multiple studies in the future. We believe this review will facilitate coordinated integration of both well-established and underutilized approaches in mechanistic toxicology and materials science by the nanomaterials research community
Citation: L. Gonzalez-Moragas, L. L. Maurer, V. M. Harms, J. Meyer, A. Laromaine and A. Roig, Mater. Horiz., 2017, DOI: 10.1039/C7MH00166E
On May 2nd Anna Laromaine was invited by Prof. Ventura Lab to give a talk in their facilities. The Group of NatasciaVentura uses C. elegans as a screening tool to unravel molecular mechanisms of mitochondrial-stress, with special attention paid to the cross-talk between genetic and environmental interventions.
The seminar will take place in the IUF Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine in Düsseldorf, Germany and will be sponsored by EMBO. Anna Laromaine will talk about her experiments in the evaluation of inorganic nanoparticles using the model organism C.elegans.
Anna Laromaine and Zhongrui Luo attended last week the VI Spanish Worm Meeting in Valencia (Spain), a biennial gathering of the scientific communitiy working with C. elegans. This meeting covers a wide range of topics, including development, neurobiology, aging and disease, metabolism and new technologies applied to C. elegans.
Anna gave the talk on “Evaluation of albumin pre-coated SPIONS in cell culture and C. elegans“ (Laura González-Moragas, Si-Ming Yu, Maria Milla, Anna Roig, Anna Laromaine) on Friday 10th March.
Luo presented the poster “Evaluation of the nano-bio interactions between Au-NPs and Caenorhabditiselegans“ (Laura González-Moragas, Zhongrui Luo, Anna Roig, Anna Laromaine). It was his first time in Valencia and he really enjoyed the meeting!