Université de Fribourg

Silica nanoparticles enhance disease resistance in Arabidopsis plants

El-Shetehy, Mohamed ; Moradi, Aboubakr ; Maceroni, Mattia ; Reinhardt, Didier ; Petri-Fink, Alke ; Rothen-Rutishauser, Barbara ; Mauch, Felix ; Schwab, Fabienne

In: Nature Nanotechnology, 2020, p. 1–10

In plants, pathogen attack can induce an immune response known as systemic acquired resistance that protects against a broad spectrum of pathogens. In the search for safer agrochemicals, silica nanoparticles (SiO2 NPs; food additive E551) have recently been proposed as a new tool. However, initial results are controversial, and the molecular mechanisms of SiO2 NP-induced disease resistance...

Université de Fribourg

A hydrofluoric acid-free method to dissolve and quantify silica nanoparticles in aqueous and solid matrices

Bossert, David ; Urban, Dominic A. ; Maceroni, Mattia ; Ackermann-Hirschi, Liliane ; Haeni, Laetitia ; Yajan, Phattadon ; Spuch-Calvar, Miguel ; Rothen-Rutishauser, Barbara ; Rodriguez-Lorenzo, Laura ; Petri-Fink, Alke ; Schwab, Fabienne

In: Scientific Reports, 2019, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 7938

As the commercial use of synthetic amorphous silica nanomaterials (SiO2-NPs) increases, their effects on the environment and human health have still not been explored in detail. An often-insurmountable obstacle for SiO2-NP fate and hazard research is the challenging analytics of solid particulate silica species, which involves toxic and corrosive hydrofluoric acid (HF). We therefore developed...