T2 AM 'Omic' Technologies: Current and Future Application to Environmental Toxicology (Part 1)
Tuesday, 15 November 2005: 8:00 AM - 11:40 AM in Ballroom 2

(WAT-1117-851039) Advancing Environmental Toxicogenomics.

Waters, M.¹, ¹ National Center for Toxicogenomics, NIEHS, NIH, DHHS, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

ABSTRACT- Toxicogenomics is just beginning to integrate the multiple data streams derived from transcriptomics, proteomics and metabonomics with traditional toxicological endpoint evaluation. This integration has the potential to synergize our understanding of environmental toxicology at the systems level. The integration of multiple domain data for knowledge discovery about animal models and mechanisms in toxicology is an important goal of the Chemical Effects in Biological Systems knowledgebase. CEBS (http://cebs.niehs.nih.gov, http://www.niehs.nih.gov/cebs-df/) is being developed to meet the information needs of systems toxicology. Systems toxicology involves the study of environmental stressor-induced perturbations, monitoring changes in molecular expression, and iteratively integrating biological response data to describe the functioning organism. Environmental toxicology and toxicogenomics are progressively developing from studies done predominantly on individual chemicals and stressors into a knowledge-based science. However, the evolution of a truly predictive toxicology wherein knowledge of toxicogenomic responses of a prototypic agent in one species and strain is used to predict the mode-of-action of a similar agent in a related strain or another species will require that the results of numerous toxicogenomics investigations across genotypes and species be assimilated into a multi-domain, multi-genome, knowledgebase. This knowledgebase must be searchable by chemical formula/stressor-type, by gene/protein/metabolite molecular signature, or by phenotypic outcome, among other entities, to find results analogous to those observed with a newly tested agent. Toxicology will then have become an information science, and environmental health and risk assessment will be the beneficiaries. CEBS will become a public resource late in 2005.

Key words: toxicogenomics, knowledgebase