Abstract
Exposure to environmental pollutants can modulate many biological and molecular processes such as gene expression, gene repair mechanisms, hormone production and function and inflammation, resulting in adverse effects on human health including the occurrence and development of different types of cancer. Carcinogenesis is a complex and long process, taking place in multiple stages and is affected by multiple factors. Some environmental molecules are genotoxic, able to damage the DNA or to induce mutations and changes in gene expression acting as initiators of carcinogenesis. Other molecules called xenoestrogens can promote carcinogenesis by their mitogenic effects by possessing estrogenic-like activities and consequently acting as endocrine disruptors causing multiple alterations in cellular signal transduction pathways. In this review, we focus on recent research on environmental chemicals-driven molecular functions in human cancers. For this purpose, we will be discussing the case of two receptors in mediating environmental pollutants effects: the established nuclear receptor, the Aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) and the emerging membrane receptor, G-protein coupled estrogen receptor 1 (GPER1).
Highlights
The environment presents all the elements that surround us (Schmidt 2012)
G-protein coupled estrogen receptor 1 (GPER1) is a seven transmembrane-domain G protein-coupled receptor that shares, with other GPCR, a similar global architecture which consists of a transmembrane canonical part formed of seven helices α with various sequences serving as a communication link between the ligands and the G protein coupling region; the extracellular part consists of three extracellular loops containing the N-terminus and the intracellular part consisting of three intracellular loops with the C-terminus (Lu and Wu 2016)
We showed that exposure to environmental molecules can play a crucial role in the process of carcinogenesis
Summary
The environment presents all the elements that surround us (Schmidt 2012). In the environment, humans are exposed to pollutants in many ways, including orally, by inhalation or by the dermal route. Pollutants are characterised by their higher persistence and pervasive nature due to high lipid solubility that allows them to remain, bioaccumulate in fatty tissues and interact with the environment for a long period of time (Mathew et al 2017) These molecules can have different mechanisms of action; they could be genotoxic or non-genotoxic which include molecules that are able to induce epigenetic modifications, to alter the endocrine system, to act as immunosuppressors or inducers of tissue-specific toxicity and inflammatory responses (Caldwell 2012, Hernández et al 2009). List of the most common environmental molecules (genotoxics and endocrine disruptors) and the different types of cancers developed following their exposure
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