Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles Altered the lncRNA Expression Profile in Human Lung Cells.

Respiration is considered to be the main occupational or environmental exposure pathway of titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO NPs), and the lung is considered to be the target organ of respiratory exposure; however, the mechanism of respiratory toxicity is not fully understood. In this study, the effect of TiO NPs on the expression profile of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) in bronchial epithelial cells (BEAS-2B) was investigated to understand their potential toxic mechanism. BEAS-2B cells were treated with 100 μg/mL TiO NPs for 48 h, then RNA sequencing was performed to screen the differential lncRNAs compared with the control group, and the enrichment pathways of the differentially expressed lncRNAs were further analyzed using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). The results identified a total of 45,769 lncRNAs, and 277 different lncRNAs were screened. KEGG pathway analysis showed that the targeted mRNAs of these different lncRNAs were enriched in the pyrimidine metabolism pathway. This work demonstrates that TiO NPs could alter the lncRNA expression profile in BEAS-2B cells, and epigenetics may play a role in the mechanism of respiratory toxicity induced by TiO NPs.