Biography
Dr. Yue Ge
Dr. Yue Ge
US Environmental Protection Agency, USA
Title: System Biology Approaches to Characterize environmental mixture toxicity
Abstract: 
Chemical interactions have posed a big challenge in toxicity characterization and human health risk assessment of environmental mixtures. To some extent, understanding the chemical interactions is the key for a successful characterization and prediction of mixture toxicity, risk, and exposure. The dilemma of lack of scientific information and research tools versus perception of high risk from exposures to mixtures by the exposed population poses an enormous challenge for the risk assessment community. To date, very few technologies are available and suitable to address all biology systems and interactions among complex mixtures at molecular, cellular, and organ levels, which are critical to the risk assessment of chemical mixtures. Therefore, there is an important need to develop novel and biology-focused methodologies and approaches for efficient analysis of environment toxicity pathways, biomarkers, and toxic mechanisms associated with exposure to chemical mixtures and for accurate distinction of chemicals in the mixture that present little or no concern from those with the greatest likelihood of causing an adverse effect in the target species. High-throughput and high-content system biology methods especially applied to predictive toxicology provide opportunities for addressing these challenges. This presentation will focus on development and application of innovative and quantitative system biology methods including genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic screening for distinct unique exposure and toxicity signatures for individual chemicals and mixtures, statistical analysis for distinguishing critical components in mixtures, mathematical modeling for prediction of mixture toxicity and risk for unknown mixtures, and system biology approach for identifying biological mechanisms underlying chemical interactions and mixture toxicity. This innovative and integrated system biology method, therefore, provides an efficient, quantitative, and practical approach for generating scientific data to characterize and predict mixture