Environmental metal toxicity assessment by the combined application of metallomics and metabolomics.

Abstract

The growing interest of our society for the environment, climate change, and the assurance of the quality of life and health has been the motor of new methodological proposals that allow a more comprehensive knowledge of the problems to be solved. In this sense, the potential of omic methodologies to study these problems from a global perspective represents a milestone in environmental studies. Therefore, the study of essential and toxic metals has a special interest, particularly in relation to toxicity issues and their association to biological interactions, transport, binding to biomolecules, and behavior in biological interfaces. These studies have promoted new instrumental platforms and methodological approaches that allow addressing these problems. Furthermore, to encompass the reality of molecule-atoms interactions in their completeness, combinations of omics have been tried, focusing on environment, food, and health issues. In this sense, the present work is situated, with the objective of reviewing the most recent methodological proposals in the field of the environment and their applications, considering not only the analytical approaches but also how they have to be applied, the use of bioindicators' exposure experiments in the laboratory, and the potential transfer of the findings from the laboratory to the field. This latter point is a true touchstone, which makes these new analytical methodologies in the necessary tools for understanding the environment and the consequences of its imbalance.