Humans are exposed to a variety of chemicals from birth, throughout their lives. Both endogenous and exogenous chemicals can affect our biological processes. There has been an increase in the usage of chemicals in various household and industrial applications. These environmental chemicals, constituting the external exposome, have been associated with a significant disease burden. Preventing exposure to hazardous chemicals in the external exposome, and mitigating the effects of such exposure, will require a clear understanding of the effects of these chemicals on the body. In order to characterize the external exposome and its effects, we compile tissue-specific chemical exposure data into this resource, Human Tissue-specific Exposome Atlas (TExAs). The chemicals in TExAs have further been integrated with potential gene targets and possible disease associations.

TExAs compiles 380 environmental chemicals detected across 27 human tissues. The chemicals are compiled from three resources that provide tissue-specific data from exposure studies - CTD, Exposome Explorer and PubChem. The chemicals from these resources have been filtered to retain only those that have been detected in 27 human tissues. For each chemical, users can access the standard chemical identifiers, 2D (two-dimensional) and 3D (three-dimensional) structure information, canonical SMILES, InChI, and InChIKey. The compiled 2D and 3D structures can be downloaded in formats such as SDF, MOL, MOL2, PDB and PDBQT. Users can access the hierarchical classification of the chemicals, which is according to ClassyFire’s structure-based hierarchy. For each chemical, the computed physicochemical properties have been provided.

Wherever data was available, the chemicals in TExAs have been linked to their potential gene targets, and to the associated diseases. We believe the integration of this data will be a step into understanding the complex linkages between chemical exposures, target genes, and the occurrence of disease. This resource aims to provide a more cohesive picture of the tissue-specific occurrence of environmental chemicals that humans are exposed to, and the possible implications they can have on human health.

CITATION
If you use our resource, please cite the following research article:
J. Ravichandran#, B.S. Karthikeyan#, S. R. Aparna & A. Samal*, Network biology approach to human tissue-specific chemical exposome, The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 214:105998 (2021).
# Joint-First authors
* Corresponding author
CONTACT
For further queries, please contact Areejit Samal.
DISCLAIMER

TExAs is an online resource that compiles 380 environmental chemicals detected across 27 human tissues. We have used several filters to compile environmental chemicals detected across human tissues from the exposure studies compiled in CTD, Exposome Explorer and PubChem. We are not responsible for any errors or omissions in chemicals detected across human tissues compiled from published literature. Note that we have used only the above three resources to compile and filter environmental chemicals detected across human tissues and hence our compilation is not based on the entire published scientific literature on exposure studies. The users are advised to make their own judgement in using the compilation available in our resource. The views expressed in this work are solely based on our scientific understanding of the topic and it does not reflect any views or policies of our employers or funders.