Environmental Metabolomics Promises and Achievements in the Field of Aquatic Ecotoxicology: Viewed through the Pharmaceutical Lens

Abstract

Scientists often set ambitious targets using environmental metabolomics to address challenging ecotoxicological issues. This promising approach has a high potential to elucidate the mechanisms of action (MeOAs) of contaminants (in hazard assessments) and to develop biomarkers (in environmental biomonitoring). However, metabolomics fingerprints often involve a complex mixture of molecular effects that are hard to link to a specific MeOA (if detected in the analytical conditions used). Given these promises and limitations, here we propose an updated review on the achievements of this approach. Metabolomics-based studies conducted on the effects of pharmaceutical active compounds in aquatic organisms provide a relevant means to review the achievements of this approach, as prior knowledge about the MeOA of these molecules could help overcome some shortcomings. This review highlighted that current metabolomics advances have enabled more accurate MeOA assessment, especially when combined with other omics approaches. The combination of metabolomics with other measured biological endpoints has also turned out to be an efficient way to link molecular effects to (sub)-individual adverse outcomes, thereby paving the way to the construction of adverse outcome pathways (AOPs). Here, we also discuss the importance of determining MeOA as a key strategy in the identification of MeOA-specific biomarkers for biomonitoring. We have put forward some recommendations to take full advantage of environmental metabolomics and thus help fulfil these promises.

Emerging contaminants: A One Health perspective

“… 452 , 455 , 456 Many studies have demonstrated the high utility of metabolomic approaches to rapidly detect fundamental shifts in organism function for a host of environmental model organisms and demonstrated how these approaches can complement traditional toxicity indicators. 107 , 181 , 457 , 458 , 459 Despite widespread concern, understanding the human health risks and toxic mechanisms remains challenging because of their dynamic nature, complex compositions, and interactions of contaminants and their mixtures, which present difficulties for conventional monitoring and modeling frameworks. 449 Nonetheless, evidence, although generally not well established, has suggested that exposures to ECs are associated with the following diseases.…”

A Novel Filter and Embedded Feature Selection Methods applied to High Dimensional Metabolomics Data in Enhancing Colorectal Cancer Classification

“…Recently, metabolomics emerged for disease diagnosis, biomarker identification, a deeper understanding of cancer metabolism and drug toxicity, the potential for improved early disease detection or therapy monitoring [4]- [6]. Additionally, metabolomics has successful applications in environmental science, nutrition, characterization of biochemical systems, and might be able to reveals insights into the mechanisms of pathophysiological processes [7]- [9]. Metabolomics data are highly dimensional, with p>>n where p is the number of variables and n is the sample size.…”

Unlocking the secrets of the microbiome: exploring the dynamic microbial interplay with humans through metabolomics and their manipulation for synthetic biology applications

“…Metabolomics is applied across the biological sciences from the study of microbial systems [ 13 ] and their interaction with other biological systems (e.g. human gut microbiome [ 14 ]), the study of the environment and its biological species (including plants [ 15 ] and aquatic systems [ 16 ]) to the study of mammals with a perhaps unsurprising large focus on humans [ 17 ]. Metabolomics approaches are normally applied to answer one of two different types of question; either to identify prognostic or diagnostic biomarkers of health or disease or to identify new biochemical processes/pathophysiological mechanisms.…”