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- Gunnarsson, Lina-Maria, 1977, et al.
(author)
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Evolutionary conservation of human drug targets in organisms used for environmental risk assessments.
- 2008
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In: Environmental science & technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 42:15, s. 5807-13
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Pharmaceuticals are typically found in very low concentrations in the aquatic environment. Accordingly, environmental effects clearly assigned to residual drugs are consistent with high affinity interactions with conserved targets in affected wildlife species rather than with a general toxic effect. Thus, evolutionarily well-conserved targets in a given species are associated with an increased risk. In this study orthologs for 1318 human drug targets were predicted in 16 species of which several are relevant for ecotoxicity testing. The conservation of different functional categories of targets was also analyzed. Zebrafish had orthologs to 86% of the drug targets while only 61% were conserved in Daphnia and 35% in green alga. The predicted presence and absence of orthologs agrees well with published experimental data on the potential for specific drug target interaction in various species. Based on the conservation of targets we propose that aquatic environmental risk assessments for human drugs should always include comprehensive studies on aquatic vertebrates. Furthermore, individual targets, especially enzymes, are well conserved suggesting that tests on evolutionarily distant organisms would be highly relevant for certain drugs. We propose that the results can guide environmental risk assessments by improving the possibilities to identify species sensitive to certain types of pharmaceuticals or to other contaminants that act through well defined mechanisms of action. Moreover, we suggest that the results can be used to interpret the relevance of existing ecotoxicity data.
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| 2. |
- Jauhiainen, Alexandra, 1981
(author)
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Microarray Analysis of mRNA Decay Assays and Prediction of Drug Target Conservation
- 2008
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis contains two papers concerning (I) the evolutionary conservation of drug targets and its potential use in environmental risk assessments and (II) mRNA degradation as a control mechanism during osmotic stress in the yeast S. cerevisiae. Environmental risk assessments are needed for the approval of new pharmaceutical compounds. To date, the risk assessments are mainly focused on organisms like algae and Daphnia. The conservation of drug targets in species relevant for ecotoxicity testing is a key aspect in developing more targeted test strategies on higher organisms like fish or amphibians. With information on predicted proteomes for a wide range of species it is possible to extract and compile data on evolutionary conservation for drug targets. In paper I, orthology data is compiled and analyzed for a set of drug targets in several species, and the result evaluated based on an extensive literature search. mRNA degradation can be investigated on a genome-wide scale with the use of a transcriptional inhibitor and subsequent hybridization of RNA pools, isolated at a set of timepoints, to microarrays. Due to the complexity of the microarray methodology in this context, the data are in need of processing and transformation to deduce relevant information on changes in degradation rates. In paper II, mRNA degradation is investigated as a posttranscriptional control effect in connection to hyperosmotic stress. We conclude that mRNA degradation mechanisms are important regulatory keys in the stress response.
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