The importance of accounting for sex in the search of proteomic signatures of mycotoxin exposure

Abstract

Mycotoxins are natural food and feed contaminants that are toxic to human and animals. Proteomics is an adequate toolbox to investigate the mode of action and the effects of mycotoxins, as these toxicants often alter protein synthesis and degradation, as well as induce changes of important post-translational modifications. For instance, the contaminant deoxynivalenol induces a severe ribosomal stress that affects protein production, whereas the toxin Fumonisin B1 can alter the phosphorylation of a large number of proteins, and patulin is a potent proteotoxic molecule. The response to most mycotoxins is sex-dependent, males being generally more sensitive than females. In addition, for some toxins, the toxic effects observed were different for each sex. Nevertheless, the importance of accounting for a sex-dependent response is often overlooked in toxicology studies involving mycotoxins. Here we review the information that proteomics has provided in pre-clinical studies of mycotoxin exposure as well as the differential response of males and females to these molecules to highlight the need of including male and female individuals when evaluating the impact of mycotoxins in the cell proteome. SignificanceThe current trend in mycotoxicology is the combination of several -omics techniques in order to understand the mechanism of action and effects of these toxic natural food contaminants. One of the goals of these experiments is to determine “potential biomarkers” of mycotoxicoses. Nevertheless, the strategy followed in biomarker research must take into account as many possible factors as possible in order to find robust biomarkers for differential diagnosis. Among the factors that can have an influence in the response to mycotoxins, one of the most important is sex. Traditionally, males are preferentially used in research, as they are more sensitive to mycotoxins and their response is not dependent on hormonal levels, thus less variable. However the intrinsic and hormonal differences between sexes makes that results obtained in males are often not directly transferrable to females. In this review, we want to highlight (1) that proteomics has a great potential on mycotoxin research, and (2) the need in taking into account sex differences in proteomic studies, mostly when the discovery of robust biomarkers of mycotoxins response is desired.