Systems Biology In Toxicology And Environmental Health

Systems Biology in Toxicology and Environmental Health uses a systems biological perspective to detail the most recent findings that link environmental exposures to human disease, providing an overview of molecular pathways that are essential for cellular survival after exposure to environmental toxicants, recent findings on gene-environment interactions influencing environmental agent-induced diseases, and the development of computational methods to predict susceptibility to environmental agents. Introductory chapters on molecular and cellular biology, toxicology and computational biology are included as well as an assessment of systems-based tools used to evaluate environmental health risks. Further topics include research on environmental toxicants relevant to human health and disease, various high-throughput technologies and computational methods, along with descriptions of the biological pathways associated with disease and the developmental origins of disease as they relate to environmental contaminants. Systems Biology in Toxicology and Environmental Health is an essential reference for undergraduate students, graduate students, and researchers looking for an introduction in the use of systems biology approaches to assess environmental exposures and their impacts on human health. Provides the first reference of its kind, demonstrating the application of systems biology in environmental health and toxicology Includes introductions to the diverse fields of molecular and cellular biology, toxicology, and computational biology Presents a foundation that helps users understand the connections between the environment and health effects, and the biological mechanisms that link them

Social pressure to minimize the use of animal testing, the ever-increasing concern on animal welfare, and the need for more human-relevant and more predictive toxicity tests are some of the drivers for new approaches to chemical screening. This book focuses on The Adverse Outcome Pathway, an analytical construct that describes a sequential chain of causally linked events at different levels of biological organization that lead to an adverse health or ecotoxicological effect. While past efforts have focused on toxicological pathway-based vision for human and ecological health assessment relying on in vitro systems and predictive models, The Adverse Outcome Pathway framework provides a simplified and structured way to organize toxicological information. Within the book, a systems biology approach supplies the tools to infer, link, and quantify the molecular initiating events and the key events and key event relationships leading to adverse outcomes. The advancement of these tools is crucial for the successful implementation of AOPs for regulatory purposes.

Building from the perspective of reproductive and developmental biology, Computational Methods for Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology provides a timely and comprehensive overview of approaches in reproductive and developmental toxicology. The book, which is part of the QSAR in Environmental and Health Sciences series, is divided into three broad sections. The first provides a review of methods and approaches to meet the need for safety assessments in product development and regulatory approaches for environmental chemicals. The next one reviews the biological processes and endpoints involved in reproduction and development. The final and largest section summarizes protocols for evaluating biological processes and endpoints within reproduction and development. It also discusses informatics resources and computational methods. The book takes a cross-disciplinary approach bringing together developmental, reproductive and systems biology, chemistry, toxicology, pharmacology, biostatistics, information sciences, bioinformatics, and computational approaches. This valuable resource provides those in the field with the necessary knowledge to evaluate both classic and recent approaches to characterize toxicity.

Advances in molecular biology and toxicology are paving the way for major improvements in the evaluation of the hazards posed by the large number of chemicals found at low levels in the environment. The National Research Council was asked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to review the state of the science and create a far-reaching vision for the future of toxicity testing. The book finds that developing, improving, and validating new laboratory tools based on recent scientific advances could significantly improve our ability to understand the hazards and risks posed by chemicals. This new knowledge would lead to much more informed environmental regulations and dramatically reduce the need for animal testing because the new tests would be based on human cells and cell components. Substantial scientific efforts and resources will be required to leverage these new technologies to realize the vision, but the result will be a more efficient, informative and less costly system for assessing the hazards posed by industrial chemicals and pesticides.

Bioinformatics has evolved significantly in the era of post genomics and big data. Huge advancements were made toward storing, handling, mining, comparing, extracting, clustering and analysis as well as visualization of big macromolecular data using novel computational approaches, machine and deep learning methods, and web-based server tools. There are extensively ongoing world-wide efforts to build the resources for regional hosting, organized and structured access and improving the pre-existing bioinformatics tools to efficiently and meaningfully analyze day-to-day increasing big data. This book intends to provide the reader with updates and progress on genomic data analysis, data modeling and network-based system tools.

The Exposome: A Primer is the first book dedicated to exposomics, detailing the purpose and scope of this emerging field of study, its practical applications and how it complements a broad range of disciplines. Genetic causes account for up to a third of all complex diseases. (As genomic approaches improve, this is likely to rise.) Environmental factors also influence human disease but, unlike with genetics, there is no standard or systematic way to measure the influence of environmental exposures. The exposome is an emerging concept that hopes to address this, measuring the effects of life-long environmental exposures on health and how these exposures can influence disease. This systematic introduction considers topics of managing and integrating exposome data (including maps, models, computation, and systems biology), "-omics"-based technologies, and more. Both students and scientists in disciplines including toxicology, environmental health, epidemiology, and public health will benefit from this rigorous yet readable overview.

Hormesis is a poorly understood phenomenon affecting all forms of life on earth. This groundbreaking book summarizes and analyzes the various positives of hormesis in an attempt to reveal hormesis as a fundamental principle of biomedical sciences as a whole.

A comprehensive analysis of state-of-the-art molecular modeling approaches and strategies applied to risk assessment for pharmaceutical and environmental chemicals This unique volume describes how the interaction of molecules with toxicologically relevant targets can be predicted using computer-based tools utilizing X-ray crystal structures or homology, receptor, pharmacophore, and quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models of human proteins. It covers the in vitro models used, newer technologies, and regulatory aspects. The book offers a complete systems perspective to risk assessment prediction, discussing experimental and computational approaches in detail, with: * An introduction to toxicology methods and an explanation of computational methods * In-depth reviews of QSAR methods applied to enzymes, transporters, nuclear receptors, and ion channels * Sections on applying computers to toxicology assessment in the pharmaceutical industry and in the environmental arena * Chapters written by leading international experts * Figures that illustrate computational models and references for further information This is a key resource for toxicologists and scientists in the pharmaceutical industry and environmental sciences as well as researchers involved in ADMET, drug discovery, and technology and software development.