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Environmental Metabolomics
Applications in Field and Laboratory Studies to
Understand from Exposome to Metabolome
Edited by
Diana Álvarez-Muñoz
Marinella Farré
Water and Soil Quality Research Group,
Department of Environmental Chemistry,
IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
Elsevier
Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom
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the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permissions policies and
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be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other than as
may be noted herein).
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our
understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any in-
formation, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be
mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional
responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability for
any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any
use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.
ISBN: 978-0-12-818196-6
xi
Contributors
xii
Preface
xiii
Acknowledgments
Huge thanks to all the people who have been involved in this project, especially to the
authors; without their hard work, this book would not have been possible. Thanks to
Elsevier, particularly to the acquisitions editor, the editorial project manager, and the
production project manager. Finally, we are thankful to our families for their support, for
understanding our passion for science, and all the time dedicated to this subject.
xv
CHAPTER 1
Fundamentals of environmental
metabolomics
Vera Kovacevic1, 2, Myrna J. Simpson1, 2
1
Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2Environmental NMR
Centre, Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough,
Toronto, ON, Canada
Chapter Outline
1. Environmental stressors 1
1.1 Contaminant stressors 2
2. Ecotoxicology 4
3. Metabolomics 5
4. Environmental metabolomics 6
4.1 Study design 7
4.2 Collection of organisms and experimental exposure 8
4.3 Sample collection, sample preparation, and metabolite extraction 9
4.4 Analytical techniques for data collection 11
4.5 Raw data preprocessing and data analysis 14
4.6 Biological interpretation of the results 17
5. Exposure to contaminant mixtures 18
6. Summary and environmental biomonitoring efforts 19
References 20
1. Environmental stressors
Aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are under constant threat from various environmental
stressors that arise from natural or anthropogenic activities. Environmental stressors
include biotic stressors such as pathogens and abiotic stressors such as drought, flood,
extreme temperatures, and salinity (Nõges et al., 2016). The release of anthropogenic
contaminants into the environment from urbanization, transportation, and industrial
activities is also contributing to environmental stress (Schaeffer et al., 2016). Increases in
the amount and variety of synthetic chemicals produced have caused contaminants to enter
the environment at a very quick pace on a global scale (Bernhardt et al., 2017). The
Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are not definitively defined, and there is no
comprehensive list of CECs. Instead, CECs are thought to be any naturally occurring or
anthropogenic compounds which are now detected or suspected to occur in soil, air, or
water and whose persistence or toxicity may significantly alter the metabolism of an
organism (Sauvé and Desrosiers, 2014). The United States Environmental Protection
Agency’s list of CECs includes POPs, PPCPs, veterinary medicines, endocrine-disrupting
chemicals (EDCs), and nanomaterials (Ankley et al., 2008, Fig. 1.1). POPs are legacy
pollutants that have existed and persisted in the environment for decades and include
polychlorinated biphenyls, dibenzo-p-dioxins, dibenzofurans, and organochlorine
pesticides such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (Nadal et al., 2015). The Stockholm
Convention on POPs is an international environmental treaty that was initiated in 2001 to
protect human health and the environment from POPs (Lallas, 2001). The screening
criteria for POPs include persistence, bioaccumulation, potential for long range transport
in the environment, and adverse impacts to organisms (McLachlan, 2018). Other organic
contaminants such as PPCPs, veterinary medicines, and EDCs can more easily degrade in
soil and water depending on their properties, but their extensive use has resulted in their
frequent detection in the environment (Bártı́ková et al., 2016; Ebele et al., 2017; Song
et al., 2018). Pharmaceuticals include over-the-counter medications and prescription drugs,
and personal care products are in everyday products such as shampoos, hair dyes,
toothpaste, and deodorants (Boxall et al., 2012). Veterinary medications include
Fundamentals of environmental metabolomics 3
Figure 1.1
Names and chemical structures of some well-known contaminants of emerging concern (CECs):
(A) persistent organic pollutants (POPs), (B) pharmaceuticals and personal care products
(PPCPs), (C) veterinary medicines, (D) endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and
(E) nanomaterials.
antibiotics, hormones, anesthetics, and antiparasitic and antifungal drugs (Bártı́ková et al.,
2016). The main entry route of veterinary medications into the environment is from
treatment of livestock, aquaculture, and companion animals (Bártı́ková et al., 2016). EDCs
include alkylphenol compounds, natural estrogens, natural androgens, synthetic hormones,
and some pharmaceuticals and pesticides (Omar et al., 2016). For instance, one of the
4 Chapter 1
2. Ecotoxicology
Ecotoxicology has traditionally been described as the study of the toxic impacts of
pollutants to ecosystem constituents, including animals, plants, and microorganisms
(Truhaut, 1977). As such, environmental quality standards have been initiated to preserve
ecosystems and human health by placing maximum permissible concentrations of
contaminants that may be detected in water, soil, or biota (Lepper, 2005). Ecological risk
assessment is generally done by comparing measured environmental concentrations
(MECs) of a contaminant to its predicted no effect concentrations (PNECs) from
ecotoxicological data which ideally represent the most sensitive species over several
trophic levels (Papadakis et al., 2015). If the risk quotient calculated from the MEC/PNEC
ratio is greater than one, then the contaminant is a concern and action should be
undertaken to confirm the environmental risk, identify the sources of contamination, and
reduce the release of contamination (Papadakis et al., 2015; Thomaidi et al., 2016).
Toxicologists have established and used acute toxicity tests on terrestrial and aquatic
organisms based on mortality or immobilization rates with increasing contaminant
concentrations (Bruce, 1985; Buckler et al., 2005). Most chronic toxicity tests also assess
Fundamentals of environmental metabolomics 5
3. Metabolomics
Metabolomics is the use of advanced analytical techniques to identify and measure low-
molecular weight metabolites that are generally less than 1000 Da in cells, tissues,
biofluids, organs, or whole organisms (Gao et al., 2019; Lin et al., 2006). This includes
primary metabolites which are involved in the development, growth, and reproduction of
an organism as well as secondary metabolites which are produced by bacteria, fungi, and
6 Chapter 1
plants and have various ecological functions (Mazzei et al., 2016; Palazzotto and Weber,
2018). Metabolomics can be considered as the downstream process of genomics,
transcriptomics, and proteomics, and the changes of metabolite levels directly relate to
biochemical activity and the phenotype (Johnson et al., 2016). Fundamental metabolic
pathways such as those involved in energy, carbohydrate, amino acid, and lipid
metabolism are conserved from bacteria to eukaryotes (Peregrı́n-Alvarez et al., 2009).
Metabolomics has applications in several fields including medicine (Wishart, 2016),
pharmacology (Pang et al., 2018), toxicology (Ramirez et al., 2018), plant biochemistry
(Skliros et al., 2018), and the environmental sciences (Zhang et al., 2018a).
The main analytical techniques that are used to collect metabolomics data sets are nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry (MS) because of the
ability for small molecule detection and the unique assets of each analytical instrument.
Targeted metabolomics analysis detects a predetermined set of metabolites, usually chosen
with regard to the biological sample to be analyzed or from metabolite libraries in
software databases (Bingol, 2018). Nontargeted metabolomics analysis is the nonbiased
analysis of as many metabolites that can be reliably identified and assigned by the
analytical instrument and metabolomics databases (Bingol, 2018). Nontargeted
metabolomics analysis frequently uses NMR spectroscopy or high resolution MS, while
targeted metabolomics analysis often uses MS as the analytical method of choice (Emwas,
2015; Mullard et al., 2015). There are around 114,000 metabolites listed in the Human
Metabolome Database (Wishart et al., 2017), but only around 1500 metabolites are
identified in nontargeted analysis, 200e500 metabolites are identified in targeted analysis,
and it is estimated that less than two dozen metabolites are regularly quantified in most
metabolomics studies (Markley et al., 2017; Psychogios et al., 2011). Once metabolites are
identified and quantified, online databases and tools may be used to aid in data
interpretation and mechanistic understanding by relating the changes in metabolite levels
to metabolic pathways that are likely impacted (Chong et al., 2018; Kanehisa et al., 2016).
Through this process, metabolomics gives detailed information about the mode of
action that may be occurring in the biological sample and may be used for high-
throughput testing of individual contaminants and mixtures (Ahmed et al., 2019; Zampieri
et al., 2018).
4. Environmental metabolomics
Environmental metabolomics involves applying metabolomic techniques to analyze the
metabolic response of organisms as a result of their interactions with the environment
(Bundy et al., 2009). Metabolomics is used to study various environmental stressors
including UV light (Zhang et al., 2018b), elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration (Creydt et al., 2019), ambient fine particulate matter (Xu et al., 2019),
Fundamentals of environmental metabolomics 7
drought (Li et al., 2018b), extreme temperatures (Tomonaga et al., 2018), and
contaminants (Roszkowska et al., 2018). Controlled laboratory exposures with target
species are performed to acquire knowledge of the mode of action of abiotic stressors,
biotic stressors, or contaminants (Garreta-Lara et al., 2016; Sivaram et al., 2019; Tang
et al., 2017). Furthermore, field-based studies may be conducted to understand how the
metabolome of organisms is impacted when exposed to an ecosystem under environmental
stress (Gauthier et al., 2018). One of the goals of environmental metabolomics research is
for utilization in environmental biomonitoring and risk assessment by applying
metabolomics techniques to keystone organisms that play important roles in trophic levels
and food webs (Bahamonde et al., 2016). To achieve these aims, environmental
metabolomics studies have a workflow that includes study design, exposure, sample
preparation, metabolite extraction, data collection, data analysis, and finally a biological
interpretation of the analyzed data.
mammals, zebrafish Danio rerio for aquatic vertebrates, the water flea Daphnia magna for
aquatic invertebrates, Arabidopsis thaliana for plants, the yeast S. cerevisiae for
eukaryotes, and Escherichia coli for prokaryotes (Kim et al., 2015; Reed et al., 2017).
terrestrial isopod (Zimmermann et al., 2018). Organisms sampled from the environment
have various factors that may impact the metabolome which should be recorded, such as
season and geographic location (Wei et al., 2018), climate (Gargallo-Garriga et al., 2015),
disease (Zacher et al., 2018), and habitat surroundings (Quina et al., 2019). Also, it is a
challenge to be certain of all the current environmental stressors present at the time of
collection and the history of organism exposure to environmental stressors (Olsvik et al.,
2018). Field-based studies also face the difficultly of locating an ideal reference site that
can act as a control which has minimal abiotic, biotic, and contaminant stressors but
where the natural settings are analogous to the impacted site (Martyniuk, 2018). However,
to aid in the metabolomics analysis and interpretation of field-based studies, there are
standard reporting requirements for metabolomics experiments of biological samples taken
from the environment (Morrison et al., 2007).
Laboratory populations are strictly controlled, and temperature, light, and diet are
maintained constantly to limit any perturbations to the metabolome. Laboratory-based
studies have the benefit of standard protocols that are available, for instance, the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development provides guidance documents
for aquatic toxicity testing and soil toxicity testing that should be followed for laboratory
work (OECD, 2002, 2004). Controlled laboratory conditions are optimal for determining
the mode of action of contaminants as the metabolic perturbations can be directly
accredited to the stressor (Gómez-Canela et al., 2016). For this reason there are standard
reporting requirements for metabolomics experiments of mammalian/in vivo work (Griffin
et al., 2007) and for metabolomics experiments of microbial and in vitro work (van der
Werf et al., 2007). The route of exposure, such as dosing, air-borne inhalation, aqueous
exposure, and others, should be carefully selected and documented (van der Werf et al.,
2007). Although the metabolic disturbances from exposure to stressors in laboratory
conditions can be extrapolated to predict the hazard in environmental settings, care must
be taken when doing so to avoid an overestimation or an underestimation of risk (Murphy
et al., 2018).
The decision of which biological sample to analyze is important since different metabolic
responses can be found across cells, tissues, organs, biological fluids, and the whole
organism (Tavassoly et al., 2018). There are advantages of choosing each biological
compartment. For instance, using cell cultures provides specific information on the
metabolic pathways involving the changes of endogenous metabolites in cells, and different
cell lines may have different metabolic alterations (Rodrigues et al., 2019). The
metabolomics analysis of a certain tissue can give information about the state of an organ
and different tissues of an organism contain different baseline metabolic profiles (Cappello
10 Chapter 1
et al., 2018). The collection of a biofluid such as blood or urine is minimally invasive and
can provide information about the overall biological state of an organism (Liao et al., 2018).
Compared to DNA sequences which can be extracted from samples over 100,000 years old
(Rohland et al., 2018), metabolite samples are highly unstable and there may be additional
changes in metabolite levels from residual enzymatic activity (Bernini et al., 2011).
Therefore, proper sample preparation is important to avoid any disturbances in the
metabolome that may occur from preparing samples. Sample preparation procedures may
need to quickly halt enzymatic activity with freezing in liquid nitrogen and samples must
be kept cold throughout any storage (Bernini et al., 2011). Some sample types need to
have water removed for analysis by NMR spectroscopy, for instance, tissue samples need
to be lyophilized soon after collection and the solvent extracts of cell cultures need to be
dried and reconstituted in an NMR buffer (Beckonert et al., 2007; Carrola et al., 2018).
NMR-based metabolomics most frequently uses a deuterium oxide phosphate-based buffer
which extracts polar metabolites (Beckonert et al., 2007). The phosphate buffer maintains
a constant pH to minimize variations in chemical shift and a deuterated solvent allows for
a lock signal in NMR spectroscopy (Schripsema, 2010). The metabolite extraction
procedure for MS analysis typically uses solvents of varying polarity to extract polar and
nonpolar metabolites and several extraction methods are based on the widely used Bligh
and Dyer extraction (Bligh and Dyer, 1959; Wu et al., 2008). The metabolite extraction
method must be developed and verified because one extraction protocol is usually not able
to extract all the metabolites from the sample. Also, the metabolite extraction method
depends on the biological matrix chosen to be analyzed, and there are well-developed
protocols for metabolite extractions from mammalian and bacterial cell cultures (Dietmair
et al., 2010; Winder et al., 2008), biological fluids such as blood and urine (Beckonert
et al., 2007; Bruce et al., 2009), and plant- and animal-derived tissues (Valledor et al.,
2014; Wu et al., 2008). To extract metabolites from cells, cold solvents such as aqueous
methanol or aqueous acetonitrile are applied to cell cultures to quench the metabolism of
cells (Dietmair et al., 2010; Rodrigues et al., 2019). For biological fluids such as blood,
there is usually a protein precipitation step to isolate proteins from the metabolite sample
by treatment with a solvent mixture such as methanol/ethanol or methanol/acetonitrile/
acetone (Bruce et al., 2009). Urine samples typically have simple sample preparation and
involve sample dilution with appropriate solvents or ultrafiltration (Khamis et al., 2017).
For tissue samples or whole organism homogenates, there is manual grinding or
homogenization with precooled extraction solvents such as methanol (Römisch-Margl
et al., 2012). Tissue samples or small whole organism homogenates may be further
sonicated to enhance the extraction efficiency (Wang et al., 2018b). Finally, centrifugation
can separate the supernatant-containing metabolites from large molecules such as
precipitated proteins and cellular and tissue debris which are pelleted from centrifugation
Fundamentals of environmental metabolomics 11
(Hamerly et al., 2015). Besides, the order of metabolite extraction and data collection from
samples also should be randomized to avoid any bias or batch impacts.
The general analytical methods used in environmental metabolomics are MS and NMR
spectroscopy. Fig. 1.2 illustrates the workflow in an environmental metabolomics study
Figure 1.2
Workflow I of a generic environmental metabolomics study: from study design to data collection
on the analytical instrument of choice.
12 Chapter 1
beginning from study design to data collection on the analytical instrument of choice.
Both NMR spectroscopy and MS analytical techniques encounter some challenges, and
there is no single analytical technique that can identify and quantify the whole
metabolome. Several studies propose direct infusion mass spectrometry (DIMS) coupled to
high resolution mass analyzers such as Orbitrap mass analyzers or Fourier transformeion
cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) mass analyzers because of the rapid and nontargeted
analysis of a wide range of metabolites (Ghaste et al., 2016; Southam et al., 2017; Taylor
et al., 2016). However, ion suppression and the complexity of the mass spectra without
sample separation with a stationary phase are disadvantages of DIMS (Ghaste et al.,
2016). Therefore, MS is usually coupled to liquid chromatography, gas chromatography, or
capillary electrophoresis for analyte separation prior to mass detection (Beale et al., 2018;
Gorrochategui et al., 2016; Sasaki et al., 2018). The stationary phase can aid in metabolite
identification using the retention time of the analyte of interest (Chekmeneva et al., 2018).
Gas chromatographyemass spectrometry (GC-MS) of polar metabolites typically requires
chemical derivatization of metabolite extract samples to form volatile and thermally stable
analytes and to also enhance the separation and detection of these metabolites (Miyagawa
and Bamba, 2019). However, the quantitation of derivatized metabolites by GC-MS
analysis may be difficult as the chemical derivatization efficiency may vary and the
stability of the derivatized metabolites may not be constant (Miyagawa and Bamba, 2019).
Metabolomics studies frequently use GC-MS with electron impact or chemical ionization
(Li et al., 2015). Capillary electrophoresisemass spectrometry (CE-MS) involves the
separation of highly polar and ionic metabolites due to different migration speeds of the
metabolites (Ramautar et al., 2019). CE-MSebased metabolomics studies often couple
capillary electrophoresis to a time-of-flight (TOF) mass analyzer (Ramautar et al., 2019).
Liquid chromatographyemass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis includes the selection of an
appropriate liquid chromatographic column, solvents for the mobile phases, potential
additives to the mobile phase, and mobile-phase gradients for separation by liquid
chromatography (Wang et al., 2018b). Most MS-based metabolomics studies use liquid
chromatography with electrospray ionization (ESI) that is suitable for the ionization of a
range of metabolites (Aszyk et al., 2018). Nontargeted metabolomics studies for global
profiling frequently use high resolution and high accuracy mass analyzers such as FT-ICR
mass analyzers or quadrupole-time-of-flight (QTOF) mass analyzers (Aszyk et al., 2018).
MS-based metabolomics studies often use triple quadrupole mass spectrometers for
targeted analysis due to the high sensitivity and selectivity (Nagana Gowda and Djukovic,
2014).
The main advantages of using MS for environmental metabolomics applications is that MS
can detect and quantify metabolites at very low concentrations in the femtomolar to
attomolar range and MS has a high dynamic range and resolution (Marshall and Powers,
2017). A disadvantage is that MS only detects metabolites that can promptly ionize, for
Fundamentals of environmental metabolomics 13
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