Abstract The development of new nanotechnologies and their use in everyday life always carries the risk of environmental hazards and consequences for human health. Among them, graphene oxide (GO) is a promising material. Due to its excellent physicochemical properties, GO is attractive not only for industrial applications but also in medicine. There is still a lack of sufficient reports on the long-term effects of GO on organisms, including studies of a multigenerational nature. We investigated the health status of two strains of Acheta domesticus : the wild type and the long-lived. The strains were exposed to GO for five generations and a sixth recovery generation. We investigated parameters that may indirectly explain the mechanisms involved in transmitting the informational pattern of the stress response to subsequent generations: DNA stability, mitochondrial potential, apoptosis, and autophagy. GO intoxication induced multilevel cellular responses in five subsequent generations. GO cessation in recovery F5 acted as a new stressor. Across five generations, variation in the response to GO was observed. GO is most likely responsible for changes that persist over generations. We believe that epigenetic inheritance is a likely mechanism underlying the multigenerational adaptation observed in GO-exposed insects, and future research should aim to elucidate this phenomenon in more detail.
Flasz et al. (Fri,) studied this question.