Promises of toxicogenomics
An NRC report finds that toxicogenomics has great potential but still has a long way to go.
A National Research Council (NRC) committee has evaluated the promises of toxicogenomics—the study of how toxic chemicals change the expression of genes and activities of proteins. Many researchers have hoped that this field will revolutionize scientists' understanding of chemicals in the environment and thus help inform regulations. In a report released October 8, the NRC committee concluded that toxicogenomics has great potential to improve biomonitoring, risk assessment, and the identification of human populations vulnerable to toxic chemicals. However, the committee found that the field still has a long way to go before fulfilling its promise. The list of much-needed developments includes new bioinformatics, statistical and computational tools, and a more concerted effort to use existing technology for predictive purposes on the same scale as the Human Genome Project.
