Bioinformatic approaches and computational models for data integration and cross-species extrapolation in the postgenomic era

The completion of the draft genome sequences for human, mouse, and rat, along with the development of genomics resources in a wide range of other species, has set the stage for the evolution of toxicology and environmental science from the study of 1 gene, 1 protein, or 1 metabolite at a time to more comprehensive approaches that allow profiling of the response of hundreds to tens of thousands of RNAs, proteins, or metabolites to external insults and stimuli. Fueled by the availability of fundamental data on the genes and proteins encoded within a wide range of species and motivated by the development of increasingly robust and reliable technologies for high-throughput analysis, new approaches in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics are beginning to provide data on a global scale. These approaches allow examination of changes in RNA, protein, or metabolite levels in the context of target genomes and the signaling and metabolic pathways that they encode.