Toxicity fingerprints

Years of working with radioactive elements in the lab left Marie and Pierre Curie very sick as well. In 1934, Marie Curie died of a blood disease caused by exposure to radiation. When scientists examined her lab notebooks many decades later, they uncovered her glowing and toxic fingerprints everywhere. 

Gabrielson, J., Kuhn, I., Colque-Navarro, P., Hart, M., Iversen, A., McKenzie, D. and Mollby, R. (2003) Microplate-based microbial assay for risk assessment and (eco)toxic fingerprinting of chemicals,... 

The microbial toxic concentration (MTC) pattern of the MARA array for the samples tested in the trial showed that a unique toxicity fingerprint was evident for the reference chemicals and the environmental samples as shown in Figures 3.1.9a-d. 

A significant early requirement for soil analysis arose from a need to define optimiun conditions for crop growth and appropriate dietary intake from feed for animal health purposes and identify soil deficiencies. Recently, research emphasis has changed to consider situations where bioaccvunulation and potential toxicity is the primary concern. Bioassays have incorporated a range of test species including plants, earthworms, and, recently, toxicity fingerprinting with a metabolic lux-marked bacterial biosensor. 

Turner NL, Horsburgh A, Paton GI, et al. (2001) A novel toxicity fingerprinting method for pollutant identification with lux-marked biosensors. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 20(11) 2456-2461. 

The monitoring of compounds with dedicated analytical methods is often insufficient to assess and maintain the quality of surface waters. Many unknown compounds can be present, some of them are harmful for the environment and also for humans. For the identification of semipolar and polar target compounds present in water, LC database fingerprints in combination with LC-MS/MS identification or LC database toxic fingerprint in combination with LC-MS/MS identification can improve the efficiency on relevant compounds. 

Gabrielson J, Kuhn I, Colque-Navarro P, Hart M, Iveisen A, McKenzie D, Mollby R (2003) A microplate based microbial assay for risk assessment (MARA) and (eco)toxic fingerprinting of chemicals. Anal Chim Acta 485 121-130... 

Because of the important nutritive attributes of the eleven elements specifically listed above, most of the analytical effort in the past few decades has been directed toward the determination of the concentrations of some or all of these elements in foods and plants of interest. However, there can also he justifiable interest in what other elements are present. Some elements are, of course, toxic even at low concentrations. Some elements may have as yet undiscovered nutritive value. Beyond these considerations it may he important to know if there are elements whose concentration depends on, and thus may be indicative of, the geographical locale in which the plants were grown. If such elements are present and if their concentrations can he measured, this information, perhaps, could be used for "fingerprinting" or characterizing the juice as to its origin. 

Van Sprang, P.A. and Janssen, C.R. (2001) Toxicity Identification of metals development of toxicity identification fingerprints, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 20, 2604-2610. 

Metabonomics (the quantitative measurement of time-related responses to stimuli within the body)17,18 may prove to be of some use to assess the potential of a material to elicit an irritant response following topical application. The concept being that certain stimuli change the metabolite profile in intermediate biochemical pathways. Analysis of body fluids such as urine, saliva, plasma, biopsy material, etc. produces a fingerprint of biochemical changes characteristic of the nature or site of a toxic (or other) effect. 

Plants such as mung bean seedlings can be used as bioindicators for toxic elements such as As [267]. Analysis of tree rings can provide information on short-term variations in pollution sources [268]. Elemental fingerprints have also been used to identify sources of plants, including cannabis [269]. 

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