Immunotoxicogenomics: A systemic approach in the study of toxicants

Immunotoxicogenomics is the holistic approach to study the effect of foreign substances on the immune system. It involves the combination of proteins and metabolites with typical toxicology to evaluate the interactions between gene expression and toxicants. The alterations in gene expression resulting due to exposure to various toxicants cause disease affecting immune system. Since immune system plays an important role in the defense system against various pathogens, xenobiotics induce changes in gene expression at molecular level. Immune cell study is important to determine the immunotoxicity caused due to various toxicants.Toxicogenomics helps to gather information regarding gene expression and protein activity in response to the exposure to toxicants. Environmental factors responsible for immune toxicity alter gene expression that can be dealt with immunotoxicogenomics. The transcriptional and transductional approaches in transgenomics evaluate profiles of toxicity related to expression of genes. The systemic approach of using omics, such as transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, authorizes the analysis of different genes particularly in an organism exposed to toxicant, evaluating mechanism of toxicity, pattern of immune response, and origin of biomarkers of exposure. Omics help to discover the immune reponse and genome linkage through various possible pathways. The current strategy in the science of immunotoxicogenomics is to explore potential role of genomic techniques for the testing of immunotoxicity. Not only omics but multiomics also play an important part at the integrated systemic level approach during the study of immune response and gene expression.