Major

Biological Sciences

Minor(s)

Chemistry; Leadership Studies

Advisor

Ross, Jaime

Advisor Department

Pharmacy Practice (PHP)

Date

4-2025

Keywords

Neuroscience; Microplastics; Mitochondria; Cell Line; Art; Brain

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing concern for the role that plastic waste, and more specifically micro- and nanoplastics, play in our environment and their potential health risks. Microplastics are particles less than 5 mm in size and nanoplastics are considered to be less than 1000 nm in size. Microplastics can either purposely be produced or can sludge off larger pieces of plastic. Microplastics have not only been detected within soil, air, and water, but have also recently been found to accumulate within the human body. The mosaic artwork that is presented in this project, entitled “Our Cerebral Plastic Reservoir”, demonstrates this plastic waste collection within the human brain. It hosts themes of environmental growth, illusive health, and generational plastic waste. Additionally, the Andy Warhol-style inspired piece, entitled “Color Theory: A Rotating Spectrum in Neurobiology”, is representative of the different software techniques that are used in lab to analyze tissues following microplastics exposure and signifies the importance of immunostaining in neurobiological research, where the spatial expression of proteins, often shown in different color channels, can provide insight into the health condition of the brain. Such techniques are being used in the Ross Lab to demonstrate microplastics permeating the blood brain barrier, resulting in alterations to immune markers in the brain, and significant age-dependent behavioral changes. These results have prompted us to more thoroughly investigate the role of microplastics exposure in aging and age-related diseases. It’s been noted that a key hallmark of neurological aging and disease is mitochondrial dysfunction, thus we sought to use in vitro models to assess how microplastics exposure may impact mitochondrial function. Using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to assess mitochondrial membrane potential together with mitotracker staining to assess mitochondrial network morphology, we found that exposure to polystyrene microplastics caused significant hyperpolarization of the mitochondrial membrane and resulted in an overall decreased number of branches and reduced branch length. These results thus far suggest that exposure to microplastics may result in mitochondrial dysfunction, which could potentially contribute to neurological and other age-related diseases.

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