Abstract
Given the high biological impact of classical and emerging toxicants, a sensitive and comprehensive assessment of the hazards and risks of these substances to organisms is urgently needed. In this sense, toxicometabolomics emerged as a new and growing field in life sciences, which use metabolomics to provide new sets of susceptibility, exposure, and/or effects biomarkers; and to characterize in detail the metabolic responses and altered biological pathways that various stressful stimuli cause in many organisms. The present review focuses on the analytical platforms and the typical workflow employed in toxicometabolomic studies, and gives an overview of recent exploratory research that applied metabolomics in various areas of toxicology.
Highlights
Within the advancement of science and technology in recent years, the application of omics strategies has allowed a paradigm shift that provides a holistic perspective on biological studies
This review focuses on recent advances in toxicometabolomics research and discusses some of the challenges and pitfalls encountered in metabolomics work
The metabolome can be divided into four categories: (i) the intracellular metabolome, which includes all metabolites produced by each cell type, tissue, or organism [10,11]; (ii) the extracellular metabolome, which refers to the metabolites secreted or consumed by the cells [11,12]; (iii) the microbial metabolome produced by the microbiota [10,13]; and (iv) the xenometabolome, which includes the metabolites derived from xenobiotics, pollutants, and diet [10,14]
Summary
Within the advancement of science and technology in recent years, the application of omics strategies has allowed a paradigm shift that provides a holistic perspective on biological studies. Among the available omics sciences, metabolomics has stood out [1], and is increasingly being used in the study of several toxic agents—a subfield named toxicometabolomics—in order to better understand their toxicity mechanisms, as well as to identify new biomarkers and target organs. Some authors restrict the metabolome to the set of endogenous metabolites [6,7,8], the exogenous metabolites (e.g., drugs and body microbiota) play an important role in an organism’s physiology or pathophysiology [9]. The metabolome can be divided into four categories: (i) the intracellular metabolome (or endometabolome), which includes all metabolites produced by each cell type, tissue, or organism [10,11]; (ii) the extracellular metabolome (or exometabolome), which refers to the metabolites secreted or consumed by the cells [11,12]; (iii) the microbial metabolome produced by the microbiota [10,13]; and (iv) the xenometabolome, which includes the metabolites derived from xenobiotics, pollutants, and diet [10,14]
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