Omics Approaches in Food and Environmental Analysis

Environmental-OMICS includes the applications of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics to understand better genetics, toxicity mechanisms, and modes of action in response to acute and chronic exposure to chemical pollution on aquatic and terrestrial organisms, and to understand which molecular events initiate these effects. These are essential goals in toxicology to predict adverse responses better or look for more efficient remediation approaches. In parallel and closely related, foodomics is a new discipline (Cifuentes, J Chromatogr A 1216:7109, 2009) applying the same omics technologies to study food and nutrition. It is a global discipline that integrates compound profiling assessment in food, food authenticity, and biomarker-detection related to food quality or safety, including contaminants in food, the development of transgenic foods, investigations on food bioactivity, and food effects on human health. In both cases, the state-of-the-art technologies to assess effects and new mass spectrometry (MS) approaches combined with bioinformatics are crucial to answer the main questions driving environmental-omics and foodomics, which are included in the One-Health concept. Human health is cross related to our environment, the organisms in this environment, and the food chain. The primary aim of the present chapter is to provide an overview of the different strategies that have been used in recent years in the environmental-omics and foodomics with the common driver of the One-Health concept. The advantages and limitations will be discussed as well, and finally, new trends presented.

This work was supported by IMAGE project PID2020-116789RB-C41from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. IDAEA-CSIC is a Severo Ochoa Centre of Research Excellence (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation; Project CEX2018-000794-S).

Peer reviewed