Project description:Abstract — Insensitive munitions (IMs) improve soldier safety by decreasing sympathetic detonation during training and use in theatre. The environmental effects of IM constituents such as nitroguanidine (NQ) and IM mixture formulations such as IMX-101 remain largely unknown. In the present study, we investigated the acute (96h) toxicity of NQ and IMX-101 to zebrafish larvae, both in the parent IMs and in IMs irradiated with environmentally-relevant levels of ultraviolet (UV) energy. Zebrafish were exposed to control and ten concentrations of NQ ranging from 1 to 732 mg/L (measured concentrations) or seven concentrations of IMX-101 ranging from 2 to 122 mg/L (measured concentrations) of the parent material or material that had been UV-irradiated (UV-treated) at the equivalent of 24 hours of sunlight. The UV-treatment increased the toxicity of NQ by 17-fold, indicated by a decreased LC50 from 1323 mg/L (parent compound) to 77.2 mg/L. Similarly, UV-treatment increased the toxicity of IMX-101 by nearly two fold (LC50 decreased from 131.3 to 67.6 mg/L). Molecular responses to parent and UV-treated IMs were assessed using global transcript expression assays. Both gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and differential transcript expression analysis coupled with pathway and annotation cluster enrichment were conducted to provide functional interpretations of expression results and hypothetical modes of toxicity. The parent NQ exposure caused significant enrichment of functions related to immune responses and proteasome-mediated protein metabolism occurring primarily at low, sublethal exposure levels (5.5 and 45.6 mg/L). Enriched functions in the IMX-101 exposure were indicative of increased xenobiotic metabolism, oxidative stress mitigation, protein degradation, and anti-inflammatory responses, each of which displayed predominantly positive concentration-response relationships. UV-treated NQ had a fundamentally different transcriptomic expression profile relative to parent NQ where positive concentration-response relationships were observed for genes involved in oxidative-stress mitigation pathways whereby we hypothesize that the increased toxicity of UV-treated NQ resulted from increased oxidative stress. This hypothesis was supported by transcriptomic responses indicative of oxidative-stress responses involved in zebrafish development, especially neurological development of visual systems and the brain. Transcriptomic profiles were similar between UV-treated versus parent IMX-101 exposures, however, more significant and diverse enrichment as well as greater magnitudes of differential expression for oxidative stress responses were observed in UV-treated IMX-101 exposures. Further, transcriptomics indicated potential for cytokine signaling suppression providing potential connections between oxidative stress and anti-inflammatory responses. Given these result, we hypothesize that the increased toxicity of UV-irradiated NQ and the IMX-101 mixture result from breakdown products with increased potential to elicit oxidative stress.

Dataset Information

Proteome of Metarhizium anisopliae MaUV-HV differentially abundant protein

Publications

Proteomic Analysis of a Hypervirulent Mutant of the Insect-Pathogenic Fungus Metarhizium anisopliae Reveals Changes in Pathogenicity and Terpenoid Pathways.

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