1 Scientific RepoRts | 5:11387 | DOi: 10.1038/srep11387 www.nature.com/scientificreports Accumulation of nanoparticles in “jellyish” mucus: a bio-inspired route to decontamination of nano- waste Amit patwa 1,2 , Alain Thiéry 3 , Fabien Lombard 4 , Martin K.S. Lilley 3,4,† , Claire Boisset 5 , Jean-François Bramard 6 , Jean-Yves Bottero 7 & Philippe Barthélémy 1,2 The economic and societal impacts of nano-materials are enormous. However, releasing such materials in the environment could be detrimental to human health and the ecological biosphere. Here we demonstrate that gold and quantum dots nanoparticles bio-accumulate into mucus materials coming from natural species such as jellyish. One strategy that emerges from this inding would be to take advantage of these trapping properties to remove nanoparticles from contaminated water. In parallel to the technological beneits expected from the impressive development of nanotechnologies, the arrival on the market of nano-products raises crucial issues dealing with human/environmental risk assessment 1 and potential associated contaminations 2 . Nanoscale materials are used in a variety of dif- ferent areas such as electronic 3 , biomedical 4–6 , nanophotonics 7 , cosmetic, energy 8 , and engineering 9 . In line with increasing production and use of nanoparticles over the next years, it is anticipated that these particles will be released into the environment during the production, transport or disposal processes. Indeed, production and manipulation of nanomaterials must be safe for everyone, meaning that com- panies, laboratories and/or factories structures must integrate the decontamination dimension in their activities. Addressing these decontamination problems calls out for research to be conducted to identify robust new methods of decontaminating aqueous nano-wastes at lower cost and with less energy, while at the same time minimizing the impact on the environment. Surprisingly, while some bioremediations of domestic waters exists during lagooning procedure of sewage treatments and despite the strong demand of producers and users of nanoparticles product, only a few types of decontamination devices have been seriously considered 10 . Recently, we discovered that hydrogel-based materials containing supra- molecular systems could be used for the decontamination of aqueous samples containing nanoparticles (NPs) 11 . hough references are available on treatment of water using bacteria and fungus 12,13 through bio-accumulation, bio-locculation and bioremediation mechanisms 14,15 , from our knowledge no litera- ture is available on biomaterials capable to quickly and eiciently remove NPs from wastewater originat- ing from nanoparticle factories. hus, since it was previously reported that nanoparticles were uptaken by several organisms 16–21 , it was conceived that decontamination alternatives might be discovered from biological systems capable of bio-accumulation of NPs. In this work, we hypothesized that mucus coming from natural resources could be used as a biomaterial to capture NPs. Here we demonstrate that gold 1 inSeRM U869, Bordeaux, f-33076, france. 2 Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, f-33076, france. 3 iMBe UMR cnRS 7263, Aix-Marseille Université, Aix en Provence f-13545, france. 4 Sorbonne Universités, UPMc Univ Paris 06, UMR 7093, LOV, Observatoire océanologique, 06230, Villefranche sur mer, france. 5 ceRMAV, cnRS UPR 5301, Grenoble, f-38041, france. 6 cambulle, 171c, av. de la Mounine, 13320 Bouc Bel-Air. 7 ceReGe europole de l’Arbois BP 80, Aix en Provence f-13545, france. † current address: School of Biological and chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, e1 4nS, UK. correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to P.B. (email: philippe.barthelemy@inserm.fr) Received: 02 December 2014 Accepted: 23 April 2015 Published: 22 June 2015 OPEN