Enhanced edible plant production using nano-manganese and nano-iron fertilizers: Current status, detection methods and risk assessment.

BACKGROUND: Nanotechnology offers many benefits in the globally important field of food production and human nutrition, particularly by implementing agricultural nanoproducts. Of these, edible plant fertilizers enriched with nanosized forms of essential metals, Mn and Fe, are growing in importance with the advantages of enhanced action on plant roots. SCOPE AND APPROACH: This review focuses on the importance of tracking the bioaccumulation and biodistribution of these pertinent nanofertilizers. An emphasis is given to the critical analysis of the state-of-the-art analytical strategies to examine the Mn and Fe nanoparticles in edible plant systems as well as to shedding light on the vast gap in the methodologies dedicated to the speciation, in vitro simulation, and safety testing of these promising nanomaterials. Also provided are guidances for the food chemists and technologists on the lights and shadows of particular analytical approaches as a matter of authors' expertise as analytical chemists. KEY FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS: While the use of nanotechnology in agriculture seems to be growing increasingly, there is still a lack of analytical methodologies capable of investigating novel Mn- and Fe-based nanomaterials as potential fertilizers. Only the advent of reliable analytical tools in the field could bridge the gaps in our knowledge about processes in which those materials participate in the plant systems and their effects on crop production and quality of the produced food.

An improved protocol for ICP-MS-based assessment of the cellular uptake of metal-based nanoparticles.

Along with a growing interest in biomedical applications of metal-based nanoparticles, there is a compelling need in systematic information on their behavior in human body systems, preferably at the cellular level. However, in most of the in-vitro uptake experiments, the nanomaterial was applied in its native form that in reality can hardly reach the cell. In this work, we developed an improved procedure in which prior to addition to the cells the particles are converted into the protein conjugates by incubation in human serum. The procedure was tested for gold nanoparticles of different size, chosen as a representative nanomaterial on multifunctional medicinal use, and MCF-7 cell line. Using ICP-MS to measure intracellular metal concentration, it was shown that an original state has significant effect on particle internalization. The protein corona significantly inhibits the uptake amount by MCF-7 cells, with the greatest influence (a 15-fold decrease compared to uncoated particles) being exerted over the smallest, 5-nm particles (3 pg Au/cell). Conjugates of larger particles (20 and 50 nm) are taken up more effectively (45 and 34 pg Au/cell, respectively). The advanced protocol makes the uptake results more reliable and its implementation may accelerate the preclinical development of metal-based nanoparticles as a viable theranostic implement.