Metabonomics in ecotoxicology, a global metabolic approach for exposure and response assessment.

CARRIQUIRIBORDE, P.

Lima, Pedru

Congreso; Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Branch Latin-American; 2009

Emerging “OMIC” technologies gave rise to “global” studies of genes, proteins and metabolites (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics). In particular, metabonomics is defined as the quantitative measurement of the time-related multiparametric metabolic response of living systems to pathophysiological stimuli or genetic modification. This approach has been mainly used in diagnosis disease, drug design and toxicant effects on humans, but much less exploit in ecotoxicology. This dissertation deal with basics and applied aspect of metabonomics, discuss strengths and weaknesses of this approach and present some examples applied to ecotoxicological studies. Changes in the metabolome are the ultimate answer of an organism to genetic alterations, disease, or environmental influences. Metabonomics is typically performed on biofluids, data are gathered with high throughput methods, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectroscopy (MS), and analyzed using dedicated software for automated identification and quantitation of metabolites. Metabonomics can be used both mechanistically to interpret hypothesis-driven research and to support discovery-driven research and the development of novel biomarkers of exposure and effect. In combination with genomic and proteomic data, the opportunity exists for personalized metabolomics indices of susceptibility. On the other hand, the availability of public databases for a comprehensive set of metabolites is essential. Recent application of metabonomics approach for evaluating global metabolic response in the bile of fish exposed to the insecticide cypermethrin allowed not only identifying a metabolic fingerprint as potential biomarker of exposure/effect, but also elucidate the hepatic detoxification pathway of this compound in the studied species. Metabonomics emerge as a powerful tool for ecotoxicological studies.