Adapting concepts from systems biology to develop systems exposure event networks for exposure science research

Abstract

Systems exposure science has emerged from the traditional environmental exposure assessment framework and incorporates new concepts that link sources of human exposure to internal dose and metabolic processes. Because many human environmental studies are designed for retrospective exposure evaluations they often do not provide practical toxicological outcome parameters. Our goal was to examine concepts from systems biology research and adapt them to a network approach that maps forward to a perturbation event using two hypothetical examples. The article proposes that environmental exposure studies should not only retrospectively document exposure levels, but also measure biological parameters that can be used to inform relevant systemic changes.

Keywords::

• Network diagram
• biological parameter
• protein adducts
• cytokine response
• variable clusters
• mixed effects model
• ADME

Acknowledgements

We thank J. Sobus, M. Medina-Vera, A. Geller, J. Preston, S. Edwards and M. Madden from US EPA, W. Funk from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and S. Rappaport from the University of California, Berkeley for valuable insights and discussions. We especially thank C. Gaul and K. Tarpley from SRA International Creative Team for producing the artwork.

This work was reviewed by the U.S. EPA and approved for publication, but does not necessarily reflect official Agency policy.

Declaratation of interest

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.