Fate and effect of trace contaminants on aquatic life.
Earth now has about 100,000 synthetic chemicals in wide use that have existed on the planet for less than a couple of hundred years. Biota have had little opportunity to adapt to this quantity and variety of "foreign" or xenobiotic chemicals. Many of these environmental contaminants, even when present at trace concentrations, are known to represent potentially harmful sources of biochemical interference to subtle fine-tuned ecological and physiological chemical signaling patterns that have evolved over millions of years. This sudden onslaught of new chemical interferents may be particularly problematic in juvenile organisms, whose development is precisely regulated via time- and concentration-dependent hormone signaling.
Wastewater treatment plants are a major source of contaminant release into the physical environment, and a host of suspected or known endocrine disrupting chemicals have been demonstrated to persist in areas adjacent to wastewater discharge sites. Chemical components of oral contraception drugs, in particular, have been demonstrated to survive the wastewater treatment process and bioaccumulate in exposed organisms, most notably in fish and other aquatic species. Though detrimental effects of exposure to these compounds have been demonstrated to occur at concentrations that are environmentally relevant, the mechanistic links between exposure and physiological endpoints are not well-established. New, systems biology-based methodologies present novel opportunities to clarify these links and thereby enhance an ability to assess risks to the natural environment from endocrine disrupting compounds. Members of our lab are conducting a systems biology-based examination of juvenile zebrafish that have been chronically exposed to environmentally-relevant concentrations of widely-used and persistent endocrine disrupting compounds. By using a combination of transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches, we hope to reveal mechanistic links between these exposures and potential adverse outcomes. Such results may have important implications for water quality management and monitoring and contribute to the construction of predictive models of toxicology.
Wastewater treatment plants are a major source of contaminant release into the physical environment, and a host of suspected or known endocrine disrupting chemicals have been demonstrated to persist in areas adjacent to wastewater discharge sites. Chemical components of oral contraception drugs, in particular, have been demonstrated to survive the wastewater treatment process and bioaccumulate in exposed organisms, most notably in fish and other aquatic species. Though detrimental effects of exposure to these compounds have been demonstrated to occur at concentrations that are environmentally relevant, the mechanistic links between exposure and physiological endpoints are not well-established. New, systems biology-based methodologies present novel opportunities to clarify these links and thereby enhance an ability to assess risks to the natural environment from endocrine disrupting compounds. Members of our lab are conducting a systems biology-based examination of juvenile zebrafish that have been chronically exposed to environmentally-relevant concentrations of widely-used and persistent endocrine disrupting compounds. By using a combination of transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic approaches, we hope to reveal mechanistic links between these exposures and potential adverse outcomes. Such results may have important implications for water quality management and monitoring and contribute to the construction of predictive models of toxicology.