Elucidating toxicological mechanisms of current flame retardants using a bacterial gene profiling assay

摘要: Flame retardants are ubiquitously used chemicals that have been shown to contaminate environments. Toxicological data is largely limited, with little insight into their molecular modes of action may give rise toxic phenotypes. Such would aid more effective risk assessments concerning these compounds, while also improving design. We therefore a bacterial stress-gene profiling assay screen twelve currently-used flame obtain mechanistic insights toxicity. Both brominated and organophosphate were tested. All compounds showed statistically significant inductions several stress genes when compared control treatments. Triphenyl phosphate, tris(2-butoxyethyl) tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl)phosphate, tris(butyl)phosphate, tetrabromobisphenol A elicited (at least) two-fold for any the genes. When looking at absolute induction levels, promoters induced indicative protein perturbation, DNA integrity membrane integrity. However, normalising different potentials clustering using hierarchical k-means algorithms indicated in addition damage, some resulted growth arrest oxidative damage. This research shows this allows determination toxicological modes-of-action accounting aids better assessment.