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Metabolomics Tools to Study Links Between Pollution and Human Health: an Exposomics Perspective

  • Human Health Effects of Environmental Pollution (KC Makris, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Metabolomics (and exposomics) as disciplines provide an unprecedented opportunity to delve into the chemical space of our environmental health and pollution landscape in the most comprehensible and high throughput manner. Ranging from diet, drugs and medications, personal care and hygiene products, cosmetics, microbiome-derived chemicals, volatile organic carbons, breathe volatiles, gases, pollutants, metals, modified endogenous metabolites, and other industrial chemicals are all represented in this chemical ecosystem which we collectively call as exposures. Approaches such as innovations in sampling and sample preparation and extraction, to analytical instrumentation, computational strategies, and bioinformatic interrogation of the datasets, continue to explode in this hot area of research. Particularly, numerous high throughput and newly developed high resolution (HR)/accurate mass (AM)–mass-spectrometry (MS)-based platforms have begun to be instrumental in capturing this chemical space around us, be it volatiles, aerosols, synthetic chemicals, or dissolved organics, in the context of environmental health (i.e., pollution) and human health (and disease). In this review, I summarize the most recently developed, relevant, updated and important analytical platforms (from mass spectrometry to spectroscopy), informatics resources, tools, databases, and strategies in metabolomics research that hold promise as tool kits for exposomics research for superior understanding of human health and disease status.

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Abbreviations

ADI-MS:

Ambient desorption/ionization mass spectrometry

AMS:

Aerosol mass spectrometry

CE-MS:

Capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry

CI:

Chemical ionization

DB:

Database

DI-MS:

Direct infusion mass spectrometry

EI:

Electron ionization

EPA:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

ESI:

Electrospray ionization

FT-MS:

Fourier-transform mass spectrometry

GC-MS:

Gas chromatography mass spectrometry

GUI:

Graphical user interface

HMDB:

Human Metabolome Database

HRMS:

High resolution mass spectrometry

IMS:

Ion mobility spectrometry

IR:

Infrared

KEGG:

Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes

LC-MS:

Liquid chromatography mass spectrometry

MS:

Mass spectrometry

MS/MS:

Tandem mass spectrometry

NIST:

National Institute of Standards and Technology

NMR:

Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

PPCP:

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products

QQQ:

Triple quadrupole

SIFT-MS:

Selected-ion-flow tube mass spectrometry

SPME:

Solid phase microextraction

TOF:

Time of flight

VOC:

Volatile organic carbon

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge the developers of the tools, databases, and in silico resources who help enrich the exposomics and metabolomics research community with their relentless efforts and to complement the efforts in rapid analytical tools development.

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  1. Center for Precision Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Molecular Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Medical Center Boulevard, Winston-Salem, NC, 27157, USA

    Biswapriya B. Misra

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Correspondence to Biswapriya B. Misra.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Human Health Effects of Environmental Pollution

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Misra, B.B. Metabolomics Tools to Study Links Between Pollution and Human Health: an Exposomics Perspective. Curr Pollution Rep 5, 93–111 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40726-019-00109-4

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