Comprehensive Transcriptomic and Epigenomic Insights into Environmental Toxicant Exposures: The TaRGET II Resource

Environmental exposures to toxic chemicals can profoundly alter the transcriptome and epigenome in both humans and animals, contributing to disease development across the lifespan. To elucidate how early-life exposure to toxicants exerts such persistent effects, the Toxicant Exposures and Responses by Genomic and Epigenomic Regulators of Transcription II (TaRGET II) Consortium generated a landmark resource comprising 2,564 epigenomes and 1,043 transcriptomes from longitudinal studies in mice. All data are publicly available through the TaRGET II data portal and the WashU Epigenome Browser. This resource from target (liver, brain, lung, heart) and surrogate (blood) tissues at weaning (3 weeks) and two adult time-points (5 and 10 months) characterized the molecular response to arsenic (As), lead (Pb), bisphenol-A (BPA), di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate(DEHP), tributyltin (TBT), tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), and particulate matter with a diameter of <2.5μm (PM_2.5). The findings revealed persistent, toxicant-specific, sex-dependent epigenomic and transcriptomic perturbations, resulting in disrupted expression of 14,908 genes, altered chromatin accessibility at 87,409 regulatory elements, DNA methylation changes at 113,186 genomic regions, and chromatin state switching of histone modifications. The resulting high-resolution map of how environmental exposures reprogram the epigenome and transcriptome is broadly accessible via ToxiTaRGET database, offering unparalleled opportunities for the scientific community to investigate the molecular underpinnings of environmental toxicant exposures and their contributions to disease pathogenesis.