Wynne-Edwards K E
Department of Biology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Environ Health Perspect. 2001 May;109(5):443-8. doi: 10.1289/ehp.01109443.
Hormone disruption is a major, underappreciated component of the plant chemical arsenal, and the historical coevolution between hormone-disrupting plants and herbivores will have both increased the susceptibility of carnivores and diversified the sensitivities of herbivores to man-made endocrine disruptors. Here I review diverse evidence of the influence of plant secondary compounds on vertebrate reproduction, including human reproduction. Three of the testable hypotheses about the evolutionary responses of vertebrate herbivores to hormone-disrupting challenges from their diet are developed. Specifically, the hypotheses are that a) vertebrate herbivores will express steroid hormone receptors in the buccal cavity and/or the vomeronasal organ; b) absolute sex steroid concentrations will be lower in carnivores than in herbivores; and c) herbivore steroid receptors should be more diverse in their binding affinities than carnivore lineages. The argument developed in this review, if empirically validated by support for the specific hypotheses, suggests that a) carnivores will be more susceptible than herbivores to endocrine-disrupting compounds of anthropogenic origin entering their bodies, and b) diverse herbivore lineages will be variably susceptible to any given natural or synthetic contaminant. As screening methods for hormone-disrupting potential are compared and adopted, comparative endocrine physiology research is urgently needed to develop models that predict the broad applicability of those screening results in diverse vertebrate species.
激素干扰是植物化学武器库中一个重要但未得到充分重视的组成部分，干扰激素的植物与食草动物之间的历史协同进化，既会增加食肉动物的易感性，也会使食草动物对人造内分泌干扰物的敏感性多样化。在此，我综述了植物次生化合物对脊椎动物繁殖（包括人类繁殖）影响的各种证据。提出了关于脊椎动物食草动物对其饮食中激素干扰挑战的进化反应的三个可检验假设。具体而言，这些假设是：a）脊椎动物食草动物将在口腔和/或犁鼻器中表达类固醇激素受体；b）食肉动物体内的绝对性类固醇浓度将低于食草动物；c）食草动物类固醇受体在结合亲和力方面应比食肉动物谱系更加多样化。如果本综述中提出的论点通过对这些特定假设的支持得到实证验证，则表明：a）食肉动物比食草动物更容易受到进入其体内的人为来源内分泌干扰化合物的影响；b）不同的食草动物谱系对任何给定的天然或合成污染物的易感性各不相同。在比较和采用激素干扰潜力的筛选方法时，迫切需要开展比较内分泌生理学研究，以建立模型来预测这些筛选结果在不同脊椎动物物种中的广泛适用性。
