This article was first published in the January 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Genetics accounts for ten to 30 per cent of disease; researchers studying the exposome might discover what causes the rest. In 2005, cancer epidemiologist Christopher Wiid invented the term "exposome" to describe all the non-genetic factors influencing human health. "The 'exposome' is a concept that was coined to stress the fact that most of the diseases we know about are due to the environment, not due to genes," says Paolo Vineis, molecular epidemiologist at Imperial College London and co-ordinator of the EXPOsOMICS project, one of two major European initiatives that are now investigating this issue.
Exposome research considers all environmental impacts on human health, identifying their biological pathways in the body and ultimately how they trigger disease. Using tools such as on-body sensors and metabolomics - the intensive study of chemical processes in the body, which can be used to trace changes in the blood -investigators are closely tracking the impact of factors such as air and water pollution, food, exercise and infection on individual health risk. "It's possible that in the future we will have a single sensor able to capture many exposures," Vineis says.
Ultimately, the current research will yield a vast collection of baseline data that will power more work on the under-studied environmental triggers of disease. "After the genome, we propose the exposome," says Vineis.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
