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From molecules to populations On the causality of toxic effects. Tjalling Jager, Bas Kooijman Dept. Theoretical Biology. effects on individual/population. toxicant. Causality. How to link toxicant concentrations to whole-organism and population effects?. NOEC/EC x. molecular.
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From molecules to populationsOn the causality of toxic effects Tjalling Jager, Bas Kooijman Dept. Theoretical Biology
effects on individual/population toxicant Causality How to link toxicant concentrations to whole-organism and population effects? NOEC/ECx molecular energy budgets Why interesting? • to support chemical risk assessment • to justify research (‘so what’ question)
Precondition 1 Any concept for causality chain should explicitly consider exposure time • Toxicity is a process in time • uptake into organism takes time • biomarker responses can/will change in time • NOEC/ECx values can/will change in time
carbendazim pentachlorobenzene time time EC10 in time Alda Álvarez et al. (2006) body length survival body length cumul. repro cumul. repro
Precondition 2 Causality chain should cover all life-history aspects • Feeding, development, growth and reproduction are linked … • NOEC/ECx differ between endpoints • what about molecular mechanism of action?
A. nanus C. elegans body size body size EC10 reproduction reproduction time time ‘Narcotic’ effects
effects on individual/population Causality of effects toxicant statistics e.g., NOEC/ECx
toxicant target site effects on individual/population molecular mechanism physiological mechanism Causality of effects rest of the organism ENERGY BUDGET
assimilation reproduction maintenance growth Energy budgets Each ‘MoA’ has specific effects on life cycle (direct/indirect)
assimilation reproduction maintenance growth Population consequences Each ‘MoA’ has specific effects for populations
Biology-based (DEBtox) toxicokinetics external concentration energy-budget parameter assimilation reproduction DEB model maintenance growth Life-cycle effects Kooijman & Bedaux, 1996 (Wat. Res.)
Experiments nematodes Species • Caenorhabditis elegans and Acrobeloides nanus Chemicals • cadmium, pentachlorobenzene and carbendazim Exposure • in agar Endpoints • survival, body size, reproduction over full life cycle • analysed with extended DEBtox Studies published as: Alda Álvarez et al., 2005 (Func. Ecol.), 2006 (ES&T), 2006 (ET&C)
C. elegans and cadmium length eggs Mode of action: assimilation length survival Alda Álvarez et al. (2005) time (days)
A. nanus and cadmium Mode of action: costs for growth Alda Álvarez et al. (2006)
Extrapolate to populations • In a constant environment, a population will grow exponentially … • ‘Intrinsic rate of increase’ • calculate from reproduction and survival in time
1 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.8 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.6 intrinsic rate (d-1) 95% 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.4 90% 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 90% 95% 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 4 4 6 6 8 8 10 10 12 12 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 concentration (mg/L) concentration (mg/L) Extrapolate to populations Mode of action: costs for growth Mode of action: assimilation Cadmium
Pulsed exposure Pieters et al. (2006)
Conclusions Simple summary statistics are useless … • NOEC/ECx change in time and differ between endpoints Molecular mechanism is important, but … • not enough to explain effects on life cycle/population Energy budgets must be considered • ‘physiological MoA’ covers direct and indirect effects • direct link to life-history and population effects Species differ in phys. MoA for the same toxicant
toxicant target site toxicant target site maintenance maintenance reproduction reproduction … … Species differences? Species A Species B
toxicant target site phys. process maintenance effect on life cycle/population reproduction … Outlook Collaboration with CEH Monks Wood • life-cycle experiments with C. elegans • data analysis with DEBtox • microarray work on same animals ?
toxicant target site phys. process maintenance effect on life cycle/population reproduction … Outlook Why useful? • number of chemicals and species is very large … • but number of target sites and processes is limited! ? www.bio.vu.nl/thb Once we know the normal biological processes, all external stressors are merely perturbations of these processes (Yang et al., 2004)