TY  - JOUR
TI  - In-house Fabrication of Nanoplastics of Tunable Composition and Application: Assessment of Bioelectric Changes in Primary Rat Lung Alveolar Epithelial Cell Monolayers Exposed to Nanoplastics
AU  - Chairil, Ricki 
AU  - Alvarez, Juan R.
AU  - Sipos, Arnold 
AU  - Malmstadt, Noah 
AU  - Crandall, Edward D.
AU  - Kim, Kwang- Jin 
VL  - 15
IS  - 11
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/05
SP  - e5329
C1  - Bio-protocol 2025;15:e5329
DO  - 10.21769/BioProtoc.5329
UR  - https://doi.org/10.21769/BioProtoc.5329
AB  - Plastic pollution presents a looming danger to the environment and virtually all life on planet Earth. Especially pernicious are nanoplastics (NPs), which are plastic fragments with dimensions ≤1 μm. Conventional detection methods are ineffective for NPs, while their high specific surface area renders them efficient carriers of toxic substances; additionally, they may even be inherently toxic. Although NP waste chiefly arises from environmental weathering of larger plastic fragments, most published studies employed manufactured pristine NPs of uniform size and shape. Furthermore, almost all NP effects were studied using polystyrene (PS) as a convenient model material, despite PS accounting for 3 gas exposure to more closely mimic real environmental NPs. We also illustrate a simple and straightforward bioelectrical method for assessing passive and active ion transport properties of primary rat lung alveolar epithelial cell monolayers as a model for the distal mammalian lung exposed to one of the generated NPs. This protocol allows researchers to rapidly and more accurately assess the biological impact of various simulated environmental NPs on a vulnerable air–blood barrier in the lung.
KW  - In-house fabrication of weathered nanoplastics
KW  - Alveolar epithelial cell monolayer model
KW  - Bioelectrical assay of active and passive ion transport properties
KW  - Nanoplastic toxicity
JF  - Bio-protocol
SN  - 2331-8325
PB  - Bio-protocol LLC.
BIO101  - False