Effects on fertility

The next live-imaging analysis concerned the extraction of the time point where the first egg was observed. This was acquired for the non-treated nematodes before 23 hours after the 3rd larval stage (Figure 5, a, b. Blue boxes). As for the worms exposed to MAPbI3, the first egg was observed after 23 hours at the lowest dose, and after 26 hours at the highest one (Figure 5a, orange, green and red boxes). Clearly, there is a shift in the worms’ fertility over exposure to perovskites, especially to the tin-based one (figure 5b), where we can observe a more marked delay for a concentration as low as 50 ug/ml.
The first generation of eggs from the non-treated worms progressed to the larval stage for the first time before 36 hours (Figure 5c, d. Blue boxes) and continued to proliferate until the end of the experiment (140 hours), where space in the chambers represented a limitation to continue the study. In parallel, eggs generated by treated nematodes developed to larvae much later for MAPbI3 (between 36 and 42 hours). Additionally, the delay was even more pronounced in the case of exposure to MASnI3 (around 38 hours at 50ug/ml). Finally, the absence of progeny at 100 and 200 ug/ml of perovskites confirms the delay in development.