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Outcomes of "EcoTox Target Challenge for Developing Biotechnology to Support Screening Chemicals for Ecological Hazards"
Citation:
Villeneuve, D., K. Flynn, M. Hazemi, M. Le, AND K. Bush. Outcomes of "EcoTox Target Challenge for Developing Biotechnology to Support Screening Chemicals for Ecological Hazards". U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 2022.
Impact/Purpose:
Key limitations in the current suite of high-throughput (HTP) screening assays have been identified including the “inadequate coverage of biological targets and pathways”. This results in an under-representation of non-mammalian taxa in HTP datasets while ecological risk assessments are often driven by toxicity to these taxa. Therefore, the transcriptome or a gene set that represents the transcriptome of test organisms and provides information on pathways of ecotoxicological significance from non-mammalian taxa will be described. Test organisms will be from diverse taxa that are currently not represented in the Agency’s HTP screening assays and will be exposed to chemicals selected with input from EPA Program Office, industry, and academia partners. The Agency is leveraging a Federal Government Challenge process, in which participants submit their gene sets and demonstrate appropriateness to four species representing fish, crustaceans, insects and algae, to advance the use of transcriptomics in ecologically relevant species. A $300,000 cash award has already been earmarked for the winning submission. A product will be the winning submission which will include the transcriptomic coverage for each species and supporting documentation of the applicability and usability of the gene sets in an HTP ecotranscriptomics pipeline. In addition, a manuscript detailing the scientific outcomes of the Challenge will be produced, highlighting the development of an ecotranscriptomic platform while still linking this information with well-defined apical outcomes.
Description:
The Agency is leveraging a Federal Government Challenge process, in which participants submit their gene sets and demonstrate appropriateness to four species representing fish, crustaceans, insects and algae, to advance the use of transcriptomics in ecologically relevant species. A $300,000 cash award has already been earmarked for the winning submission. This sub-product will be a package containing the following: 1) the public announcement of the Challenge, called the Ecotox TARGET Challenge, that was vetted through both the Agency and Challenge.gov approval processes 2) a summary of the valid submissions and the assessment of those submissions by the judging panel 3) the Agency and Challenge.gov announcement of the winner of the Ecotox TARGET Challenge
URLs/Downloads:
SUMMARY.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 1323.573 KB, about PDF)https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-announces-winner-ecotox-target-challenge-developing-biotechnology-support#:~:text=won%20the%20EcoTox%20Target%20Challenge,earned%20the%20prize%20of%20%24300%2C000.