Human Exposome

You are exposed to many man-made chemicals in your daily life. The food and water you consume, the air you breathe, and the products you use can all contain these chemicals. Exposures to toxic chemicals begin from the moment of conception and continue throughout life. The exposome is a measure of all exposures over a lifetime. The exposome interacts with your genome (genetic information) to determine your health. Even if you have the same toxic exposures as someone else, you can respond differently due to your different genetics.

Million Marker utilizes metabolomics (the study of chemicals that are involved in metabolism) and personal exposure analysis to allow individuals to measure and track their own exposures to environmental toxins. Starting with a few biomarkers of environmental exposures, our vision is to discover over a MILLION MARKERS to inform and improve individual health and advance medicine.

References

Dennis, K. K., Auerbach, S. S., Balshaw, D. M., Cui, Y., Fallin, M. D., Smith, M. T., ... & Miller, G. W. (2016). The importance of the biological impact of exposure to the concept of the exposome. Environmental health perspectives, 124(10), 1504-1510.
Rappaport, S. M. (2016). Genetic factors are not the major causes of chronic diseases. PloS one, 11(4), e0154387.
Herceg, Z., Ghantous, A., Wild, C. P., Sklias, A., Casati, L., Duthie, S. J., ... & Kondo, Y. (2018). Roadmap for investigating epigenome deregulation and environmental origins of cancer. International journal of cancer, 142(5), 874-882.
Walker, D. I., Valvi, D., Rothman, N., Lan, Q., Miller, G. W., & Jones, D. P. (2019). The Metabolome: a Key Measure for Exposome Research in Epidemiology. Current Epidemiology Reports, 1-11.
Niedzwiecki, M. M., Walker, D. I., Vermeulen, R., Chadeau-Hyam, M., Jones, D. P., & Miller, G. W. (2019). The exposome: molecules to populations. Annual review of pharmacology and toxicology, 59, 107-127.