Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
become much broader and, in addition to other aspects, now plays a major role in new
approaches to the toxicology of chemicals, particularly in the development of programs
for handling microarray data. While such data are probably of most importance in
mode-of-action studies, the effects on the expression of XME genes are of importance
in the study of pesticide metabolism. Bioinformatics is characterized by computation-
ally intensive methodology and includes the design of large databases and the tech-
niques needed for their manipulation, including data mining. Again, such applications
to pesticides are few (e.g.,
Wallace et al., 2011
) but they will certainly increase. A useful
summary of bioinformatics is provided by
Kullman et al. (2010)
.
CONCLUSIONS
As long as pesticides are used, and both target and nontarget species are exposed to
them, the metabolism of pesticides will continue to be of importance and will con-
tinue to be investigated. It is also clear, as indicated above, that the techniques used will
change as will the purposes to which the results are applied, but these will still include
such activities as risk assessment and the development of selective pesticides.
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