BioTechniques News
Beatrice Bowlby
Researchers have constructed a network mapping the pathobiological impact of chemical exposures on the molecular level, with the potential to inform public health.
From the air we breathe to the food we eat, we are constantly exposed to thousands of chemicals – yet how these exposures affect our health has remained surprisingly difficult to understand. A new study led by researchers at the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (CeMM) and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine at the University of Vienna (LBI NetMed; both Vienna, Austria) offers a unifying view: diverse substances can disrupt the same biological systems and thereby contribute to disease risk in predictable ways.
Environmental pollution is estimated to contribute to around one in six deaths worldwide, but scientists have long struggled to connect specific exposures to specific diseases. One reason is the sheer complexity of the ‘exposome’, the totality of all environmental influences a person encounters over a lifetime. Traditionally, chemicals have been grouped by their structure or origin, but this says little about what they actually do inside the body. Two nearly identical molecules can have completely different effects, while entirely unrelated substances may trigger the same illness. This has made it difficult to move from observation to understanding.
A new study, led by Jörg Menche, CeMM Adjunct Principal Investigator and Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine and first authored by former PhD Student at CeMM and LBI NetMed (now PostDoc at Harvard Medical School) Salvo Danilo Lombardo, takes a different route: instead of asking what chemicals look like, the researchers asked what they do. They compiled nearly 10,000 environmental exposures, ranging from pollutants and food components to medications, and mapped how each one affects human genes. The result is a large-scale network that links exposures based on shared biological effects.
When the researchers zoomed in on this network, a striking pattern emerged. Exposures were grouped into clusters reflecting common biological functions, such as inflammation, metabolism or blood clotting. Within these clusters, chemically diverse compounds like pharmaceuticals and environmental toxins were found to act on the same molecular pathways. The network showed that the body responds to these exposures not based on their chemical identity, but on the biological systems they perturb.
A spatial approach to finding cancerous chemicals
In this interview, Justin Colacino, an Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, discusses the role of environmental factors in chronic disease development, investigating at the interface of toxicology, epidemiology and data science.
A map of hidden biological connections
To understand why some exposures are more harmful than others, the team looked at where their effects occur within the cell’s internal wiring, the so-called ‘protein interaction network’. Here, not all proteins are equal – some act as central hubs, coordinating many essential processes. The study shows that exposures targeting these hubs tend to be more damaging. Even a single hit to a highly connected protein can ripple through the system, amplifying its impact. This provides a simple but powerful principle: the more central the biological target, the greater the potential harm.
The researchers then took a step further, asking whether these molecular insights could help explain real-world disease patterns. By comparing their network predictions with large-scale health and environmental data from across Europe, they found that countries with higher levels of certain exposures also showed higher rates of diseases connected to those exposures at the molecular level. This suggests that the biological “distance” between an exposure and a disease, as measured within the network, can help predict which health outcomes are likely to occur.
From molecules to public health
“Taken together, the findings offer a new way of thinking about how the environment influences health,” shared corresponding author Jörg Menche. “Rather than treating each chemical in isolation, the study shows that many exposures converge on shared biological pathways, forming a complex but structured system of interactions. By mapping these connections, researchers can begin to anticipate the health effects of exposures – even those that have not yet been studied in detail.”
This work provides a foundation for a more systematic understanding of the exposome, bridging the gap between molecular biology and public health. In the long term, such approaches could help identify hidden risks, improve environmental monitoring and support strategies to reduce disease burden.
This article has been republished from the following materials. Material may have been edited for length and house style. For further information, please contact the cited source. Our press release publishing policy can be accessed here.
The post Map connects chemical exposures with their shared genetic effects appeared first on BioTechniques.
Powered by WPeMatico