Environmental metabolomics and xenometabolomics for the assessment of exposure to contaminant mixtures

Abstract Day life activities release a huge amount of anthropogenic chemicals into the environment. They make complex mixtures of hazardous substances that pose a potential risk to wildlife. Even very low concentrations can be toxicologically relevant. Besides, when organisms are exposed to a number of different chemical substances, simultaneously these may act jointly affecting the overall level of toxicity. Given that it is unrealistic to assess every possible combination of chemical substances, the major challenge now is to develop systematic ways of addressing chemical mixtures in environmental assessment. The application of nontarget analysis techniques like metabolomics seems to be the way forward and it's been increasingly used. Metabolomics allows profiling the metabolome and xenometabolome of organisms exposed to contaminant mixtures and identify biomarkers of exposure. In this chapter, a revision of the studies performed within this topic is presented together with the main conclusions, challenges, and future trends.