The development of the exposome concept has been one of the hallmarks of environmental and health research in the 21st Century. The exposome encompasses the life course environmental exposures (including pollutants, lifestyle factors, and behaviors) from the prenatal period onwards, that can affect the structure, physiology, and metabolism of an individual, causing potential adverse, often permanent, health effects at any point in life. Linking such exposures to adverse outcomes and consequently to specific diseases via intermediate phenotypes such as the metabolome is one of the central themes of exposome research. To date, work on the exposome almost exclusively targets human health issues, and only recently has the integration of exposome and One Health concepts been noted. The demand for multidisciplinary research to meet today’s complex environment and human health challenges is urgent. Investigating the effects of multiple stressors across multiple species within the concepts of the exposome and One Health ensures that health problems are evaluated thoroughly and holistically. Although the number of metabolomic studies associated with exposome research is increasing, their overall number is still very limited, providing information mainly on specific chemical groups and ignoring the role of combined exposures as a mixture of multiple chemicals. Furthermore, many of these studies use a small number of individuals, doses that do not reflect true environmental concentrations, and analytical methods with limited coverage of the metabolome.
This Research Topic aims to address the challenges and gaps in the current understanding of the exposome by leveraging metabolomics and its branches (e.g., lipidomics, volatilomics, fluxomics). The main objectives include elucidating the complex interactions between environmental exposures and health outcomes, developing robust protocols for exposome fingerprinting, and identifying biomarkers of exposure, disease progression, and susceptibility factors. By focusing on these aims, the research will contribute to a more accurate assessment of chemical safety and the development of intervention and prevention strategies.
To gather further insights into the complex interplay between environmental exposures and health outcomes, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Targeted and untargeted metabolomic approaches
- Protocols development for assessing exposome fingerprinting
- Characterization of human or animal health effects derived from environmental exposures using metabolomic approaches
- Mapping pathways related to environmental exposures
- Construction of models to evaluate and predict environmental health
- Determination of biomarkers of exposure, disease progression, and susceptibility factors
- Discussion of future directions of metabolomics applied to exposome research
Manuscripts that address other challenging issues in this field, including software tools and databases, novel statistical approaches, application of machine learning algorithms, or combination with other -omics, are also of interest for this Research Topic. Original research articles, reviews, perspectives, and commentaries on these topics will be accepted and will be of great value to all researchers working in this field.
Keywords: Metabolomics, Exposome, Environmental Health, Toxicology, Multi-stressers
Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
