M8 PM Chiral Chemistry: Toxicology of Environmental Contaminants and Phase Transfer
Monday, 14 November 2005: 1:50 PM - 5:30 PM in 337-338

(KON-1117-829754) Investigating the enantioselective toxicity of conazole fungicides in rainbow trout through NMR-based metabolomics.

Konwick, B¹, Fisk, A¹, Garrison, W², Kenneke, J², Ekman, D², ¹ University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA² U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Athens, GA, USA

ABSTRACT- The conazole fungicides represent a large group of compounds widely used agriculturally for the protection of crops and pharmaceutically in the treatment of topical and systemic infections. Almost all conazoles possess at least one chiral center and thus exist as one (or more) pairs of enantiomers with differing biological properties. The determination of any enantioselective toxicity is an essential component for accurate risk assessment of chiral pesticides. Recently, metabolomics, or the quantitative measurement of a broad spectrum of metabolic responses of living systems in response to disease onset or genetic modification, has been employed to enable rapid identification of the mechanisms of toxicity for compounds of environmental concern, such as the enantiomers of chiral pesticides. In this study, we investigated the potential for this new technology to differentiate the toxicities of the enantiomers of triadimefon and other conazoles in rainbow trout using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Preliminary NMR data show a significant metabolic response in rainbow trout livers to racemic triadimefon, fed via gavage, as indicated by differences in the endogenous metabolite pattern from that of a control. This abstract has been reviewed and approved for presentation and publication by the U.S. EPA, but does not necessarily reflect U.S. EPA policy.

Key words: chiral, metabonomics, enantiomer, pesticides