Bulletin of environmental contamination and toxicologyAug 11, 2021

Nanoplastics Cause Greater Gut Microbiome Imbalance and Inflammation than Microplastics in Adult Zebrafish

Gut-Brain Axis Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Feb 19, 2026

Abstract

Exposure to 1 mg/L of microplastics and nanoplastics for 21 days resulted in significant changes to the gut microbiota of zebrafish.

Both microplastics and nanoplastics could induce microbiota dysbiosis in the gut of zebrafish.
The diversity of gut microbiota significantly increased under high concentrations of nanoplastics.
Proteobacteria abundance significantly increased, while Fusobacteria, Firmicutes, and Verrucomicrobiota abundances significantly decreased after exposure to nanoplastics.
Actinobacteria abundance decreased in the microplastics treatment groups but increased in the nanoplastics treatment groups.
The relative abundance of Aeromonas significantly increased in both treatment groups.
Nanoplastics exposure was associated with increased mRNA levels of inflammation-related genes, while microplastics exposure did not show this effect.

Simplified

Microplastics (MPs) (< 5 mm) and nanoplastics (NPs) (< 100 nm) are emerging environmental pollutants and have been proved could cause a series of toxicity in aquatic organisms. In this study, the effects on gut microbiota of adult zebrafish exposed for 21 days to 10 μg/L and 1 mg/L of MPs (8 μm) and NPs (80 nm) were evaluated. We analyzed the intestinal microbial community of zebrafish using high throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene V3-V4 region and also performed transcriptional profiling of the inflammation pathway related genes in the intestinal tissues. Our results showed that both spherical polystyrene MPs and NPs could induce microbiota dysbiosis in the gut of zebrafish. The flora diversity of gut microbiota significantly increased under a high concentration of NPs. At the phylum level, the abundance of Proteobacteria increased significantly and the abundance of Fusobacteria, Firmicutes and Verrucomicrobiota decreased significantly in the gut after 21-day exposure to 1 mg/L of both MPs and NPs. Furthermore, interestingly, the abundance of Actinobacteria decreased in the MPs treatment groups but increased in the NPs treatment groups. At the genus level, revealed that the relative abundance of Aeromonas significantly increased both in the MPs and NPs treatment groups. Moreover, it was observed that NPs increased mRNA levels of il8, il10, il1β and tnfα in the gut, but not in MPs exposure group, indicating that the NPs may have a more serious effect on the gut of zebrafish than MPs to induce microbiota dysbiosis and inflammation in the gut.

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Nanoplastics Cause Greater Gut Microbiome Imbalance and Inflammation than Microplastics in Adult Zebrafish

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