Environmental metabolomics is a powerful approach to investigate the response of organisms to contaminant exposure at a molecular scale. However, metabolomic responses to realistic environmental conditions can be hindered by factors intrinsic to the environment and the organism. Hence, a well-designed experimental exposure associated with adequate statistical analysis could be helpful to better characterize and relate the observed variability to its different origins. In the current study, we applied a multifactorial experiment combined to Analysis of variance Multiblock Orthogonal Partial Least Squares (AMOPLS), to assess the metabolic response of wild marine mussels, Mytilus galloprovincialis, exposed to a wastewater treatment plant effluent, considering gender as an experimental factor. First, the total observed variability was decomposed to highlight the contribution of each effect related to the experimental factors. Both the exposure and the interaction gender × exposure had a statistically significant impact on the observed metabolic alteration. Then, these metabolic patterns were further characterized by analyzing the individual variable contributions to each effect. A main change in glycerophospholipid levels was highlighted in both males and females as a common response, possibly caused by oxidative stress, which could lead to reproductive disorders, whereas metabolic alterations in some polar lipids and kynurenine pathway were rather gender-specific. This may indicate a disturbance in the energy metabolism and immune system only in males. Finally, AMOPLS is a useful tool facilitating the interpretation of complex metabolomic data and is expected to have a broad application in the field of ecotoxicology.

中文翻译：

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生态毒理学中环境代谢组学数据的多因素分析：案例：暴露于污水处理厂废水中的野生海洋贻贝。

环境代谢组学是研究生物对分子水平上污染物暴露的反应的有力方法。然而，对现实环境条件的代谢组学响应可能会受到环境和有机体固有因素的阻碍。因此，精心设计的实验暴露以及适当的统计分析可能有助于更好地表征和将观察到的变异性与其不同来源相关联。在本研究中，我们将多因素实验应用于方差分析多块正交偏最小二乘分析（AMOPLS），以评估野生贻贝Mytilus galloprovincialis的代谢反应暴露于废水处理厂的废水中，并将性别作为实验因素。首先，将观察到的总变异性分解以突出显示与实验因素相关的每种效应的贡献。接触和交互作用性别×接触都对观察到的代谢变化有统计学意义的影响。然后，通过分析各个变量对每种作用的贡献，进一步表征这些代谢模式。男性和女性都强调了甘油磷脂水平的主要变化，这是常见的反应，可能是由氧化应激引起的，这可能导致生殖功能紊乱，而某些极性脂质和犬尿氨酸途径的代谢改变则具有性别特异性。这可能表明仅男性中能量代谢和免疫系统受到干扰。最后，AMOPLS是促进复杂的代谢组学数据解释的有用工具，有望在生态毒理学领域得到广泛应用。