The genetic toxicology of nanomaterials is a crucial toxicology issue and one of the least investigated topics. Substantially, the genotoxicity of metal oxide nanomaterials’ data is resulting from in vitro comet assay. Current contributions to the genotoxicity data assessed by the comet assay provide a case-by-case evaluation of different types of metal oxides. The existing inconsistency in the literature regarding the genotoxicity testing data requires intelligent assessment strategies, such as weight of evidence evaluation. Two main tasks were performed in the present study. First, the genotoxicity data from comet assay for 16 noncoated metal oxide nanomaterials with different core composition were collected. An evaluation criterion was applied to establish which of these individual lines of evidence were of sufficient quality and what weight could have been given to them in inferring genotoxic results. The collected data were surveyed on (1) minimum necessary characterization points for nanomaterials and (2) principals of correct comet assay testing for nanomaterials. Second, in this study the genotoxicity effect of metal oxide nanomaterials was investigated by quantitative nanostructure–activity relationship approach. A set of quantum-chemical descriptors was developed for all investigated metal oxide nanomaterials. A classification model based on decision tree was developed for the investigated dataset. Thus, three descriptors were identified as the most responsible factors for genotoxicity effect: heat of formation, molecular weight, and surface area of the oxide cluster based on the conductor-like screening model. Conclusively, the proposed genotoxicity assessment strategy is useful to prioritize the study of the nanomaterials for further risk assessment evaluations.

中文翻译：

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金属氧化物纳米颗粒诱导的遗传毒性：大量证据研究以及颗粒表面和电子性质的影响

纳米材料的遗传毒理学是一个至关重要的毒理学问题，也是研究最少的主题之一。基本上，金属氧化物纳米材料的数据的遗传毒性来自体外彗星试验。通过彗星试验评估对遗传毒性数据的最新贡献可对不同类型的金属氧化物进行逐案评估。文献中关于遗传毒性测试数据的现有不一致之处需要智能评估策略，例如证据评估的权重。在本研究中执行了两个主要任务。首先，从彗星试验中收集了16种具有不同核心组成的非涂层金属氧化物纳米材料的遗传毒性数据。应用评估标准来确定这些单独证据中的哪一条具有足够的质量，以及在推断出遗传毒性结果时可以赋予它们多少权重。收集的数据在（1）纳米材料的最低必要特征点和（2）纳米材料的正确彗星试验测试原理上进行了调查。其次，在这项研究中，通过定量的纳米结构-活性关系方法研究了金属氧化物纳米材料的遗传毒性作用。为所有研究的金属氧化物纳米材料开发了一套量子化学描述子。针对所研究的数据集，开发了基于决策树的分类模型。因此，基于类似导体的筛选模型，确定了三个描述基因是遗传毒性影响的最主要因素：形成热，分子量和氧化物簇的表面积。最后，