Study on Reproductive Toxicity of Fine Particulate Matter by Metabolomics

Abstract Airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution is a serious environmental problem, thus it is very important to study the toxicity effect and mechanism of PM2.5. In this study, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based metabolomics technique was used to investigate the metabolic disruption effect and reproductive toxicity mechanism of PM2.5 on rat testis. The profile of aqueous and organic testis metabolic extracts were acquired, and then analyzed by partial least square-discriminant analysis and nonparametric test. The results showed that control group and treatment group were clearly discriminated in the scoring plot of partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) models, indicating PM2.5 treatment induced significant difference in testis metabolome, a total of 56 differential metabolites were identified, and further pathway analysis suggested that PM2.5 exposure induced amino acid and nucleotide metabolism disorder, steroid hormone metabolism imbalance and abnormal lipid metabolism. These important pathways may be the key molecular evens in the PM2.5 reproductive toxicity.