Integration Of Toxicology Research Articles

Protecting our environment, a motivating outdoor game for proteomics!

The global Earth ecosystem faces many intertwined threats, primarily anthropogenic pollution, drastic reduction of wild spaces, faster spread of pathogens, and global climate warming. Ecotoxicology, the integration of toxicology and ecology, aims to describe the effects of toxicants on organisms, whether at the level of the population, the community, the ecosystem, or the biosphere. Sentinel species are employed to assess threats to life, giving advance warning of danger. In this issue of Proteomics, Wilde and collaborators (Proteomics 2022, 22, https://doi.org/10.1002/pmic.202100289) present a comprehensive coverage of the proteome of the crustacean Daphnia magna, a species used to evaluate aquatic pollution. This study illustrates how current shotgun proteomics technology allows straightforward quantitation of any protein for whole animals or dissected organs, making global molecular phenotyping a reality for animals. Tandem mass spectrometry operated in data-independent acquisition can be used to compare the response of sentinels to various environmental conditions. The current low number of well-annotated animal or plant genomes, the high diversity of genetic backgrounds of each species, and the paucity of knowledge about protein functions for most of the relevant sentinels pose huge challenges for data interpretation. As a result, ecology and ecotoxicology today constitute an exceptional field for proteomics.

Pesticides, aquatic food webs, and the conservation of Pacific salmon

Pesticides pose complex threats to the biological integrity of aquatic ecosystems. In the western US, pesticides have contaminated many surface waters that provide habitat for endangered salmon. These iconic species depend on the productivity of rivers, lakes, and estuaries to provide food for juvenile growth, a key determinant of subsequent marine survival. Despite extensive societal investments in salmon habitat restoration in recent years, the role of pesticides as a limiting factor for salmon recovery has received little attention. Pesticides can be toxic to primary producers and macroinvertebrates, thereby limiting salmon population recovery through adverse, bottom‐up impacts on aquatic food webs. The integration of toxicology, environmental chemistry, population biology, community ecology, landscape ecology, conservation biology, and environmental policy is needed to better understand these indirect effects of pesticides on endangered species. We highlight key information gaps and discuss how future research on pesticides and food webs can most effectively guide the long‐term conservation of imperiled fish species.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed:Richard N.L. Andrews, Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves. A History of American Environmental Policy andDouglas R. Weiner, A Little Corner of Freedom. Russian Nature Protection from Stalin to Gorbachev (Maxwell Bruce, QC)William Wilson, Making Environmental Laws Work: Law and Policy in the UK and USA (Tim Swanson)Robin Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment (Lavanya Rajamani)Peter Bautista Payoyo, Cries of the Sea: World Inequality, Sustainable Development and the Common Heritage of Humanity (David M. Ong)Rolf Bommer, Economic Integration and the Environment (Bettina Lange)Volker Kleinschmidt and Dieter Wagner (editors), Strategic Environmental Assessment in Europe (Richard Macrory)Simon Bell and Stephen Morse, Sustainability Indicators. Measuring the Immeasurable (Maxi Alexander)UNEP, Global Environment Outlook 2000 (Antonia Layard)Peter Hough, The Global Politics of Pesticides. Forging Consensus from Conflicting Interests (Elizabeth Vogelezang‐Stoute)Timothy Swanson and Marco Vighi (editors), Regulating Chemical Accumulation in the Environment: the Integration of Toxicology and Economics in Environmental Policymaking (Lorelei Moosbrugger)Pieter Glasbergen (editor), Co‐operative Environmental Governance: Public‐Private Agreements as a Policy Strategy (Halina Ward)Ken Sexton, Alfred A. Marcus, K. William Easter and Timothy Burkhardt (editors), Better Environmental Decisions. Strategies for Governments, Businesses and Communities (Veerle Heyvaert)Jonathan Golub (editor), New Instruments for Environmental Policy in the EU (Ian Skinner)Jonathan Golub (editor), Global Competition and EU Environmental Policy (Matthias Buck)