ABSTRACT
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Abstract
Toxicogenomics combines transcript, protein, and metabolite profiling with conventional
toxicology to investigate the interaction between genes and environmental stress in disease
causation. The patterns of altered molecular expression that are caused by specific exposures
or disease outcomes have revealed how toxicants act and cause disease. Despite numerous
success stories, the field faces significant challenges in discriminating the molecular basis of
toxicity. In this chapter we argue that toxicology is gradually evolving into a systems
toxicology. This will ultimately allow us to describe all the toxicological interactions that
occur within a living system under stress and use our knowledge of toxicogenomic responses
in one species to predict the modes-of-action of similar agents in other species.