Risk Assessment of Lead Induced Toxicity Profiling from Toxicogenomics Data of Human Cell Lines

Heavy metal toxicity is a health menace and is posing a significant risk because of adulteration of drinking water and often associated with folk lore therapies. Lead induced toxicity poses considerable impact on the developing brains of fetuses and young children, including pregnant women. Gene expression profiling studies has made advancement in identifying key regulatory genes responsible for complex diseases. In this study, an effort has been made to assess the risk of lead induced toxicity by conducting toxico-genomics profile analysis that involved identification, characterization and mapping of significantly expressed genes to lead induced diseases. The data source used in this study was derived from Affymetrix cDNA Microarray based experiment on Lead acetate induced Peripheral blood mononuclear cells. The data was retrieved from public repositories, cleaned and further processed before statistical treatments. The results demonstrated significant expression of Metallothionein family of genes in lead acetate induced cell-lines. Further, annotation of these genes gave insights into the complex relationship of the genes with clinical outcomes observed during lead toxicity. Mapping of these genes by means of GENEMANIA produced a scale-free gene expression network. The study reveals an intricate relationships of heavy metal induced genes and their respective disease association in a scale free network.