Anna will give the talk on “Evaluation of albumin pre-coated SPIONS in cell culture and C. elegans“ on Friday, 10th March, at 9 am.
Luo will present the poster on “Evaluation of the nano-bio interactions between Au-NPs and Caenorhabditiselegans“ (Laura González-Moragas, Zhongrui Luo, Anna Roig, Anna Laromaine).
The Spanish Worm Meeting (SWM) is a biennial gathering of the scientific communitiy working with C. elegans. It covers a wide range of topics, including development, neurobiology, aging and disease, metabolism and new technologies applied to C. elegans.
In the website www.gusano.info you can find information about previous Spanish Worm Meetings and resources related to C. elegans (research groups, wormbase, wormbook, etc.).
Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are present in many man-made products and cosmetics, and are also used by the food and medical industries. Tight regulations regarding the use of mammalian animals for product testing can hamper the study of the specific interactions between engineered nanoparticles and biological systems. Invertebrate models, such as the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), can offer alternative approaches during the early phases of nanoparticle discovery.
Panels B and C are optical microscopy images of B) 11-nm and C) 150-nm AuNPs treated worms. 11-nm AuNPs appear pink, and 150-nm AuNPs appear blue.
Here, we thoroughly evaluated the biodistribution of 11-nm and 150-nm citrate-capped AuNPs in the model organism C. elegans at multiple scales, moving from micrometric to nanometric resolution and from the organism to cellular level. We confirmed that the nanoparticles were not able to cross the intestinal and dermal barriers. We investigated the effect of AuNPs on the survival and reproductive performance of C. elegans, and correlated these effects with the uptake of AuNPs in terms of their number, surface area, and metal mass. In general, exposure to 11-nm AuNPs resulted in a higher toxicity than the larger 150-nm AuNPs. NP aggregation inside C. elegans was determined using absorbance microspectroscopy, which allowed the plasmonic properties of AuNPs to be correlated with their confinement inside the intestinal lumen, where anatomical traits, acidic pH and the presence of biomolecules play an essential role on NP aggregation. Finally, quantitative PCR of selected molecular markers indicated that exposure to AuNPs did not significantly affect endocytosis and intestinal barrier integrity.
Anna and Luo will attend on 9th-10th March the VI Spanish Worm Meeting in Valencia (Spain). 
