The Role of Oxidative Stress in Nanotoxicology

The application of systems biology approaches is gaining popularity in the nanoparticle toxicology research (Brandenberger, 2010; Oberdorster, Oberdorster and Oberdorster, 2005; Nyland and Silbergeld, 2009). Over the past few years, there has been a movement toward describing and characterizing trends in nanotoxicological data sets. In order to interpret these observed trends, the use of a holistic perspective may be appropriate. One of the cornerstones of systems biology is the use of experimental and computational models. Nanotoxicology could benefit from these efforts. Both systems biology and nanotoxicology attempt to discover emergent properties of a system and link those properties, using a variety of techniques to environmental and human health. While the investigations in the field of systems biology are frequently large in scale, nanotoxicology has yet to accomplish this feat, to date. Both fields require an interdisciplinary approach from experimentalists (biologist, chemists, toxicologists, and risk assessors) and quantitative scientists (biostatisticians, mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers). Together, their efforts can be coordinated to improve the quality of science and to create, refine, and retest the experimental and computational models to accurately reflect, and eventually predict, biological, and toxicological observations. Keywords: nanoparticles; oxidative stress; cellular uptake; reactive oxygen species (ROS); fluorescent probes; confocal microscopy; redox states; antioxidants