Editorial: New analytical and statistical approaches for interpreting the relationships among environmental stressors and biomarkers

Abstract

The broad topic of biomarker research has an often-overlooked component: the documentation and interpretation of the surrounding chemical environment and other meta-data, especially from visualization, analytical and statistical perspectives. A second concern is how the environment interacts with human systems biology, what the variability is in “normal” subjects, and how such biological observations might be reconstructed to infer external stressors. In this article, we report on recent research presentations from a symposium at the 248th American Chemical Society meeting held in San Francisco, 10–14 August 2014, that focused on providing some insight into these important issues.

• Breath analysis
• chemical carcinogenesis
• environmental
• pollution/ecotoxicology
• heavy metal toxicity
• pesticide exposure

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful for thoughtful advice and comments from the various speakers, participants, audience members, and colleagues at the meeting. The United States Environmental Protection Agency through its Office of Research and Development has subjected this article to Agency administrative review and approved it for publication.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.