Sequencing Technology Advances and Toxicology

Systems toxicology is going through a revolution with advancements in genomics methods. Microarray technology has been a significant driving force in toxicogenomics. Next generation sequencing methods promise to overtake use of microarrays in the toxicology tool kit by overcoming many of the limitations of microarrays. In next generation sequencing, every nucleic acid molecule is sequenced individually and counted. Millions of molecules can be sequenced simultaneously eliminating the need for traditional standards and reference samples. The promise of next generation sequencing is that genome of an entire organism or a cell can be sequenced rapidly and affordably. All the RNA transcripts in a cell can be sequenced, identified, counted, and categorized with almost absolute precision. Systems toxicology, which involves the iterative study of how chemicals influence gene expression and toxicological outcomes will be vastly improved with the adaptation of next generation sequencing. Keywords: sequencing; digital-PCR; microarrays; pharmacogenomics; diagnostics