An integration of hightroughput molecular (HT) data such as transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, with higher order level biomakers to assess the health status of ecological relevant species from real water and soil samples

The current ecotoxicological approach to assess the toxic potential of a water or soil sample is usually based on simple tests looking to high order level endpoints such as mortality, replication or reproduction rates of selected model species. Nothwistanding their unsurpassed value for screening purpose, these tests often lack of a mechanistic basis which is required to correctly evaluate the risk linked with the pollution load and the degree of biological vulnerability of the investigated ecosystem. Biomakers have been introduced almost thirty years ago with the aim to fill these gaps. Even if a large progress have been made in this field, biomakers may still lack in efficacy because of the limited number of mechanistic effects that they can explain without an a priori assumption of the type of chemicals present in the evironment and their mode of action. This latter indication may not be always available, in particular when the contamination is present in the form of a complex mixture of chemicals.
Now, the development of hightroughput molecular techniques such as transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics can provide up to thousands of data within a single analysis [1]. The classification of these results into functional categories such as the Gene Ontology and/or KEGG molecular and cellular pathways provides a reliable procedure to virtually establish the mechanistic processes linked with pollutant exposure and uptake, toxic injuries and the overall health status of the investgated organism.

“Systems ECO-Health Assessment” is an integrated procedure encompassing at least one HT data set -i.e. transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics on selected species; the  functional categorization of HT data into cellular process and pathaways; a suite of selected biomarkers aimed to confirm the virtual processes inferred from HT data; high order level endpoints to establish the occurrence of a pathological stress syndrome at individual level and/or possible effects at population/community  level.  The tool is ready for use.
This methodology was tested with laboratory exposures (single chemicals and mixtures) on different ecological relevant species such as earthworms, nematods, daphnids, marine mussels, amoebae and human cells [2-5].
As a part of this tool, it has beeb developed a HT data repository where, actually, transciptomics data from different ecological relevant species can be stored, browsed, searched and analyzed (http://mi.caspur.it/tdMultiLayout/td_login.php).
Example application of “Systems ECO-Health Assessment” in real scenarios for ecological risk assessment and biomonitoring procedures are already available [6-7]. Moreover, an European Environmental Protection Agency -the Italian institution
ISPRA- has recently adopted this procedure withtin the national project: “Dioxin Emergency in the Campania Regional District” [8].
The application of this tool requires the technological transfer from one partner-institution involved in the WP 3.4 of the NoMiracle project.

Professor Aldo Viarengo, University of Piemonte Orientale “Amdeo Avogadro”, Alessandria,  DISAV, viarengo@unipmn.it