Abstract
Most of environment-related diseases often result from multiple exposures of abiotic and/or biotic stressors across various life stages. The application of environmental DNA/RNA (eDNA/eRNA) to advance ecological understanding has been very successfully used. However, the eminent extension of eDNA/eRNA-based approaches to estimate human exposure to biotic and/or abiotic environmental stressors to understand the environmental causes of chronic diseases has yet to start. Here, we introduce the potential of eDNA/eRNA for bio-monitoring of human exposome and health effects in the real environmental or occupational settings. This review is the first of its kind to discuss how eDNA/eRNA-based approaches can be applied for assessing the human exposome. eDNA-based exposome assessment is expected to rely on our ability to capture the genome- and epigenome-wide signatures left behind by individuals in the indoor and outdoor physical spaces through shedding, excreting, etc. Records of eDNA/eRNA exposome may reflect the early appearance, persistence, and presence of biotic and/or abiotic-exposure-mediated modifications in these nucleic acid molecules. Functional genome- and epigenome-wide mapping of eDNA offer great promise to help elucidate the human exposome. Assessment of longitudinal exposure to physical, biological, and chemical agents present in the environment through eDNA/eRNA may enable the building of an integrative causal dynamic stochastic model to estimate environmental causes of human health deficits. This model is expected to incorporate key biological pathways and gene networks linking individuals, their geographic locations, and random multi-hits of environmental factors. Development and validation of monitoring of eDNA/eRNA exposome should seriously be considered to introduce into safety and risk assessment and as surrogates of chronic exposure to environmental stressors. Here we highlight that eDNA/eRNA reflecting longitudinal exposure of both biotic and abiotic environmental stressors may serve as records of human exposome and discuss its application as molecular tools for understanding the toxicogenomics basis of environment-related health deficits.
Highlights
Humans are stochastically exposed from conception/origin onwards to multiple sets of environmental factors present in the indoor and outdoor physical spaces where we live, recreate, and work
Despite it being widely recognized that longitudinal multiple environmental exposures that modulate the genetic, epigenetic, and phenotypic changes contribute to chronic disease onset; we are not able to measure the total human exposure from our environment over time due to the lack of availability of tools to bio-monitor exposome
The records of eDNA exposome, including biotic and abiotic exposure that result in modifications in these nucleic acid molecules, have the potential to reflect their early appearance, persistence, and presence in both target organs and peripheral blood/excreta
Summary
Humans are stochastically exposed from conception/origin onwards to multiple sets of environmental factors present in the indoor and outdoor physical spaces where we live, recreate, and work. The functional analysis of the entire genome- and epigenome-mapping of eDNA/eRNA has great potential, for monitoring genomic and epigenomic modifications, but to genetically detect and identify emerging pathogens that may exert adverse effects at organismal/human levels Most importantly, this method allows for biomonitoring without requiring collection of the living organism/samples from individuals, creating the ability to study organisms that are invasive, elusive, or endangered without introducing anthropogenic stress on the organism. Fish from polluted sites compared to unpolluted sites show the highest levels of DNA damage compared to other two species [48] These studies suggest that environmental stressors present in the real-life terrestrial, fresh water, and marine settings can be assessed by changes at the genome level of organisms and eDNA collected over time may reflect the record of footprints of a long-term exposure of environmental stressors
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