Progress in toxicogenomics

Toxicogenomics is an emerging discipline that uses the latest genomic technologies for toxicology studies.It can quickly detect the alteration of genome-wide gene expression resulting from the interaction of chemical compounds and organisms,and the toxicity of compounds can be qualitatively analyzed through bioinformatics.Additionally,toxicogenomic approaches allow screening of more biomarkers for traditional toxicity testing,explain the mechanisms of toxicity,and reduce the uncertainty of risk assessment.However,problems such as non-uniform experimental design,flawed analysis theory,and relatively expensive testing costs restrict this field's development.Furthermore,the greatest concern faced by toxicogenomics is the inconsistency between its purpose and the methods in which it is carried out.It has long been recognized that the main objective of toxicogenomics,and also its most attractive advantage,is to conduct a more comprehensive classification and prediction of toxicities,but the published research works continue to focus mainly on biomarker screening and interpretation of toxicity mechanisms.And the current toxicity prediction studies are based on the extraction of a compound-specific 'signature',a concept originated from tumor diagnosis,which comprises a group of marker genes and their expression level at defined treatment conditions.This method ignores the information of the dynamic changes of gene expression,which reflect the true and compound-specific gene expression pattern in theory.The newly developing microRNA toxicogenomics and dynamic analysis of gene expression profile could potentially address these problems.Overall,current toxicogenomics can only supply additional reference data for the risk assessment,but will eventually provide a strong theoretical basis and accurate prediction,and improve the reliability of risk assessment.