A decade of toxicogenomic research and its contribution to toxicological science.
Toxicogenomics enjoyed considerable attention as a ground-breaking addition to conventional toxicology assays at its inception. However, the pace at which toxicogenomics was expected to perform has been tempered in recent years. Next to cost, the lack of advanced knowledge discovery and data mining tools significantly hampered progress in this new field of toxicological sciences. Recently, two of the largest toxicogenomics databases were made freely available to the public. These comprehensive studies are expected to stimulate knowledge discovery and development of novel data mining tools, which are essential to advance this field. In this review, we provide a concise summary of each of these two databases with a brief discussion on the commonalities and differences between them. We place our emphasis on some key questions in toxicogenomics and how these questions can be appropriately addressed with the two databases. Finally, we provide a perspective on the future direction of toxicogenomics and how new technologies such as RNA-Seq may impact this field.
Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, National Center for Toxicological Research, US Food and Drug Administration, Jefferson, Arkansas 72079, USA.
Minjun
M
Chen
Min
M
Zhang
Jürgen
J
Borlak
Weida
W
Tong
D022126:Access to Information; D000818:Animals; D015706:Bibliometrics; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000378:metabolism; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000639:trends; D057225:Data Mining; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D007668:Kidney / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D008099:Liver / Q000187:drug effects / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013997:Time Factors; D018675:Toxicity Tests / Q000639:trends; D043922:Toxicogenetics / Q000639:trends
D015415:Biomarkers