High-Throughput Transcriptomics Analysis of Chemical Effects on Zebrafish Liver (ZFL) and Embryonic (ZEM2S) Cells

With thousands of chemicals in commerce and the environment with incomplete ecotoxicity information, rapid identification of potential hazards is a critical need. Molecular profiling assays such as high-throughput transcriptomics (HTTr) provides an efficient means of screening chemicals for bioactivity and potential hazards in cell lines derived from ecological species. Information from HTTr screening can be used to identify concentrations of test chemicals that perturb cellular biology, as the basis for mechanistic prediction and to group chemicals based on bioactivity patterns. In this study, a set of chemicals, including drugs and chemicals found in consumer products, were tested in eight-point concentration series in two zebrafish cell lines: the ZFL liver cell line (ATCC CRL-2643) and the ZEM2S embryonic cell line (ATCC CRL-2147). At total of 42 unique chemicals were tested in each cell line. The experimental design also included vehicle control wells and reference chemicals tested in either eight-point concentration series or at a single concentration in order to assess assay performance.