Assessing health risks from multiple environmental stressors: Moving from G×E to I×E.

Research on disease causation often attempts to isolate the effects of individual factors, including individual genes or environmental factors. This reductionist approach has generated many discoveries, but misses important interactive and cumulative effects that may help explain the broad range of variability in disease occurrence observed across studies and individuals. A disease rarely results from a single factor, and instead results from a broader combination of factors, characterized here as intrinsic (I) and extrinsic (E) factors. Intrinsic vulnerability or resilience emanates from a variety of both fixed and shifting biological factors including genetic traits, while extrinsic factors comprise all biologically-relevant external stressors encountered across the lifespan. The I×E concept incorporates the multi-factorial and dynamic nature of health and disease and provides a unified, conceptual basis for integrating results from multiple areas of research, including genomics, G×E, developmental origins of health and disease, and the exposome. We describe the utility of the I×E concept to better understand and characterize the cumulative impact of multiple extrinsic and intrinsic factors on individual and population health. New research methods increasingly facilitate the measurement of multifactorial and interactive effects in epidemiological and toxicological studies. Tiered or indicator-based approaches can guide the selection of potentially relevant I and E factors for study and quantification, and exposomics methods may eventually produce results that can be used to generate a response function over the life course. Quantitative data on I×E interactive effects should generate a better understanding of the variability in human response to environmental factors. The proposed I×E concept highlights the role for broader study design in order to identify extrinsic and intrinsic factors amenable to interventions at the individual and population levels in order to enhance resilience, reduce vulnerability and improve health

Recon3D enables a three-dimensional view of gene variation in human metabolism

Genome-scale network reconstructions have helped uncover the molecular basis of metabolism. Here we present Recon3D, a computational resource that includes three-dimensional (3D) metabolite and protein structure data and enables integrated analyses of metabolic functions in humans. We use Recon3D to functionally characterize mutations associated with disease, and identify metabolic response signatures that are caused by exposure to certain drugs. Recon3D represents the most comprehensive human metabolic network model to date, accounting for 3,288 open reading frames (representing 17% of functionally annotated human genes), 13,543 metabolic reactions involving 4,140 unique metabolites, and 12,890 protein structures. These data provide a unique resource for investigating molecular mechanisms of human metabolism. Recon3D is available at http://vmh.life

The ethical and legal landscape of brain data governance

Neuroscience research is producing big brain data which informs both advancements in neuroscience research and drives the development of advanced datasets to provide advanced medical solutions. These brain data are produced under different jurisdictions in different formats and are governed under different regulations. The governance of data has become essential and critical resulting in the development of various governance structures to ensure that the quality, availability, findability, accessibility, usability, and utility of data is maintained. Furthermore, data governance is influenced by various ethical and legal principles. However, it is still not clear what ethical and legal principles should be used as a standard or baseline when managing brain data due to varying practices and evolving concepts. Therefore, this study asks what ethical and legal principles shape the current brain data governance landscape? A systematic scoping review and thematic analysis of articles focused on biomedical, neuro and brain data governance was carried out to identify the ethical and legal principles which shape the current brain data governance landscape. The results revealed that there is currently a large variation of how the principles are presented and discussions around the terms are very multidimensional. Some of the principles are still at their infancy and are barely visible. A range of principles emerged during the thematic analysis providing a potential list of principles which can provide a more comprehensive framework for brain data governance and a conceptual expansion of neuroethics

INTEROPERABILITY IN TOXICOLOGY: CONNECTING CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL, AND COMPLEX DISEASE DATA

The current regulatory framework in toxicology is expanding beyond traditional animal toxicity testing to include new approach methodologies (NAMs) like computational models built using rapidly generated dose-response information like US Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxicity Forecaster (ToxCast) and the interagency collaborative Tox21 initiative. These programs have provided new opportunities for research but also introduced challenges in application of this information to current regulatory needs. One such challenge is linking in vitro chemical bioactivity to adverse outcomes like cancer or other complex diseases. To utilize NAMs in prediction of complex disease, information from traditional and new sources must be interoperable for easy integration. The work presented here describes the development of a bioinformatic tool, a database of traditional toxicity information with improved interoperability, and efforts to use these new tools together to inform prediction of cancer and complex disease. First, a bioinformatic tool was developed to provide a ranked list of Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) to gene associations based on literature support, enabling connection of complex diseases to genes potentially involved. Second, a seminal resource of traditional toxicity information, Toxicity Reference Database (ToxRefDB), was redeveloped, including a controlled vocabulary for adverse events used to map identifiers in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), thus enabling a connection to MeSH terms. Finally, gene to MeSH associations were used to evaluate the biological coverage of ToxCast for cancer to understand the capacity to use ToxCast to identify chemical hazard potential. ToxCast covers many gene targets putatively linked to cancer; however, more information on pathways in cancer progression is needed to identify robust associations between chemical exposure and risk of complex disease. The findings herein demonstrate that increased interoperability between data resources is necessary to leverage the large amount of data currently available to understand the role environmental exposures play in etiologies of complex diseases.Doctor of Philosoph