Network Biology Approach for Identification of Pre-disease Biomarkers from Contaminant-Phenotype Relationship

Contamination of environmental matrix the air, water and soil are dominated by the pollutants released from diverse arena of municipal waste, hospitals and health sectors, industrial and agricultural activities. The interaction of contaminated environment with organisms has direct association with the health of status of population in the habitat. The elements fluoride, arsenic, lead, and copper have their applications in enormous activities and are released to the environment at significant quantity from various sources, fair enough to deteriorate environment and cause health impacts. The public database including chemical–gene/protein interactions, chemical–disease, and gene-disease linkages attempts to understand better how environmental exposures of these pollutants impact human health. These data are used with functional and pathway data to build hypotheses concerning the environmental disease. Diseases are detected by characteristics or traits such as morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, or behaviour without any implication of a mechanism. This chapter discusses effects of fluoride, arsenic, lead, and copper with phenotype relationships to help identifying pre-disease biomarkers resulting from their environmental exposures. The goal is to build a network of chemical pollutants-phenotype relationships to prioritize phenotypes common to all sets resulting from pollution exposure. This chapter also aid in the proper detection of profound genetic and phenotypic abnormalities that are required in patient healthcare.