Toxicogenomics and systems toxicology: aims and prospects.
Toxicogenomics combines transcript, protein and metabolite profiling with conventional toxicology to investigate the interaction between genes and environmental stress in disease causation. The patterns of altered molecular expression that are caused by specific exposures or disease outcomes have revealed how several toxicants act and cause disease. Despite these success stories, the field faces noteworthy challenges in discriminating the molecular basis of toxicity. We argue that toxicology is gradually evolving into a systems toxicology that will eventually allow us to describe all the toxicological interactions that occur within a living system under stress and use our knowledge of toxicogenomic responses in one species to predict the modes-of-action of similar agents in other species.
Waters
Michael D
MD
National Center for Toxicogenomics, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, PO Box 12233, MD F1-05, 111 Alexander Drive, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709-2233, USA. waters2@niehs.nih.gov
Fostel
Jennifer M
JM
D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004463:Ecology; D005544:Forecasting; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D040901:Proteomics; D013598:Systems Theory; D043922:Toxicogenetics; D014116:Toxicology