About this Research Topic

Background

Genetics alone can account for only 10-30% of the risk of complex diseases. The exposome encompasses the life-course total environmental exposures, which can be chemical, biological, physical, and even socio-psychological. The concept of exposome was originally proposed by cancer epidemiologist Christopher Paul Wild in 2005 to translate the “genetics + environment” conceptual framework to study human diseases into the actionable “genome + exposome” research paradigm. As a highly interdisciplinary field, exposome studies develop and utilize omics technology to measure different types of exposures; explore the abiotic and biotic drivers of the diversity and dynamics of exposures; investigate the impact of exposures on human, animal, and environmental health within the ‘One Health’ framework; and dissect the underlying molecular impacts of the environmental exposures. In humans, the impact of the exposome is evident in acute infectious diseases such as COVID-19, as well as chronic diseases such as cancer, allergy/asthma, diseases caused by the ever-increasing antibiotics or drug-resistant superbugs, and various respiratory diseases. Despite the critical importance of studying the exposome, the field is still in its infancy.

At the forefront, there are desperate needs for affordable portable/wearable exposome monitoring devices, free and generalized databases for chemical and biological exposome quantification, rigorous experimental design, statistical methods to analyze the often highly variable exposome data, and established cell-line and animal experimental systems to study the impact of the exposome at the mechanistic level. The goal of the Research Topic is to advance the breadth and depth of the exposome field in the broadest sense possible, spanning from the development of sampling technology and data-driven exposome analysis efforts to the hypothesis-driven research dissecting of molecular mechanisms underlying the positive or negative impact of exposures. The research topic will be mainly focused on biological exposome and chemical exposome, including environmental vectors such as particulate matters, microplastics, and antimicrobial resistance exposures. It should be noted that similar to the findings in the field of microbiome research, the exposome may impact health either positively or negatively which is different from the pathology and toxicology studies.

This Research Topic welcomes all kinds of manuscripts including Original Research, Protocols, Reviews and Mini-reviews, Perspectives, Opinions, etc. The following research directions are all of the interests, but the authors are encouraged to submit all the exposome-related manuscripts.

• Development of new portable/wearable technology to efficiently sample the exposome from all potential matrices/sources: air exposome, water exposome, soil exposome, diet exposome, and non-contact exposome.
• Development of new technology for real-time or near real-time detection of targeted (multi-drug resistant) pathogen/chemicals of special interests in a practical setup.
• New experimental and computational approaches for analyzing biologicals in the exposome cloud, with a special focus on extracting DNA/RNA from organisms in different domains of life concurrently.
• New experimental and computational approaches for analyzing chemical mixtures in the exposome cloud, including both inorganic and organic components.
• Building spatiotemporal biological and chemical exposome databases in diverse environments.
• Statistical approaches and frameworks to analyze spatiotemporal exposome data and the influence of environmental factors.
• Human, animal, and environmental antibiotic/biocide/metal resistomes.
• Multiomics studies on how the exposome impact the health statuses of human, animals, and the environment.
• The relationships between external exposome and internal exposome in different organisms.
• Establishing cell line/animal model systems to dissect the molecular mechanisms of how environmental exposures impact health, negatively, or positively.
• Investigating the interactions between chemical and biological components in the exposome cloud.
• Determining the combined exposure effects of various co-existed stressors in the exposome cloud, including biotic-abiotic, biotic-biotic, and abiotic-abiotic.

Keywords: Exposome, Exposure science, Human health, Aerosol biology, Airborne pathogens, Antibiotics resistance

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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