The importance of transcriptomics and proteomics for studying molecular mechanisms of mycotoxin exposure: A review

This review aims to highlight recent advances where transcriptomics and proteomics have been used as a key tool to understand molecular toxicity of mycotoxins. The most studied mycotoxin by using transcriptomic approach is deoxynivalenol (DON), followed by aflatoxins (AFs) and zearalenone (ZEA). Instead, proteomics mostly focuses on AFs but also in this case, mildly to ZEA and DON. However, in both omics approaches, fewer studies investigated the toxicological effect of emerging mycotoxins, patulin, ochratoxin A, T-2 toxin, alternariol and amino-14,16-dimethyloctadecan-3-ol. The study of changes in the expression of genes involved in immune system are the most common purposes for transcriptomics whereas cellular processes in proteomics field. Concerning the techniques used to perform the experiments, RT-qPCR is the most employed in gene expression analysis whereas liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry is the master technique for proteomics assays. The gathered data have reported that the interest in using these omic approaches has increased in the last five years. However, in vitro models take precedence over the in vivo and ex vivo ones. Therefore, there is a need to enhance the use of in vivo models and alternative methods to better understand mycotoxins mode of action on animal and human health.