Development of a mechanistically informative genome-wide, in vitro chemicals screening technology

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Modern industrial society generates large amounts of novel chemicals to which humans are exposed both directly and indirectly through environmental release. Governments specify test procedures with which to regulate the release of these chemicals, though ensuring that the chosen test method relates to the safety and environmental consequences of release is a major scientific issue. In principle the most informative tests involve experiments on whole, living animals, but there is powerful societal pressure to reduce the numbers of animals used this way. Scientists have sought to identify alternatives to the use of living animals, and two systems are now being developed, namely the use of cell cultures and the use of early stage, developing embryos. This project seeks to greatly refine these alternative test methods to generate far more information on how the cells or embryos respond to chemicals treatment by using a new technology for simultaneously interrogating the performance of all of the genes in the cells or embryo. This technique holds much promise for identifying the properties of the entire system and this gives a much more profound view of how chemicals have their effects. This information will be use with computer modeling to generate an ability to predict the responses of animals to chemicals with unknown properties.