Department of Global Public Health and Bioethics, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Department of Population Health Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Environ Health Perspect. 2024 Sep;132(9):95001. doi: 10.1289/EHP14509. Epub 2024 Sep 27.
BACKGROUND: Exposomics, the study of the exposome, is flourishing, but the field is not well defined. The term "exposome" refers to all environmental influences and associated biological responses throughout the lifespan. However, this definition is very similar to that of the term "environment"-the external elements and conditions that surround and affect the life and development of an organism. Consequently, the exposome seems to be nothing more than a synonym for the environment, and exposomics a synonym for environmental research. As a result, some have rebranded their "standard" environmental health research with the neologistic exposome term, whereas others ignore or seek to abandon the seemingly redundant concept of the exposome. OBJECTIVES: We argue that exposomics needs to sharpen its mission focus to counteract this apparent redundancy. Exposomics should be defined as a research program in environmental health aimed at enabling a comprehensive and discovery-driven approach to identifying environmental determinants of human health. Similar to the aim of the Human Genome Project, exposomics aims to analyze the complete complexity of exposures and their corresponding biological responses. Exposomics' primary premise is that the existence of undiscovered, potentially interconnected, nongenetic (environmental) risk factors for health necessitates a comprehensive discovery-driven analysis approach. DISCUSSION: We argue that exposomics researchers should adopt our reconceptualization of exposomics and focus on the productiveness and integrity of their research program: its purpose and principles. We suggest that exposomics researchers should coordinate the writing of reviews that assess the program's productiveness and integrity, as well as provide a platform for exposomics researchers to define their vision for the field. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP14509.
背景:外核组学,即外核组的研究,正在蓬勃发展,但该领域尚未得到很好的定义。“外核组”一词是指整个生命周期中所有的环境影响和相关的生物反应。然而,这个定义与“环境”一词非常相似——指的是环绕并影响生物体的生命和发展的外部元素和条件。因此,外核组似乎只不过是环境的同义词,而外核组学是环境研究的同义词。因此,一些人用新造词“外核组”重新命名他们的“标准”环境健康研究,而另一些人则忽略或试图放弃外核组这一看似多余的概念。
目的:我们认为,外核组学需要明确其使命重点,以消除这种明显的冗余。外核组学应该被定义为环境健康研究的一个研究计划,旨在实现全面的、以发现为导向的方法,以确定人类健康的环境决定因素。与人类基因组计划的目标类似,外核组学旨在分析暴露的完整复杂性及其相应的生物反应。外核组学的主要前提是,存在未被发现的、潜在相互关联的、非遗传(环境)健康风险因素,这需要采用全面的、以发现为导向的分析方法。
讨论:我们认为,外核组学研究人员应该采用我们对外核组学的重新构想,并关注其研究计划的生产力和完整性:其目的和原则。我们建议,外核组学研究人员应该协调撰写评估该计划生产力和完整性的综述,并为外核组学研究人员提供一个定义该领域愿景的平台。https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP14509.
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