Inhalation Toxicity of Indoor Air Pollutants in Drosophila Melanogaster Using Integrated Transcriptomics and Computational Behavior Analyses

We conducted an inhalation toxicity test on the alternative animal model, Drosophila melanogaster, to investigate potential hazards of indoor air pollution. The inhalation toxicity of toluene and formaldehyde was investigated using comprehensive transcriptomics and computational behavior analyses. The ingenuity pathway analysis (IPA) based on microarray data suggests the involvement of pathways related to immune response, stress response, and metabolism in formaldehyde and toluene exposure based on hub molecules. We conducted a toxicity test using mutants of the representative genes in these pathways to explore the toxicological consequences of alterations of these pathways. Furthermore, extensive computational behavior analysis showed that exposure to either toluene or formaldehyde reduced most of the behavioral parameters of both wild-type and mutants. Interestingly, behavioral alteration caused by toluene or formaldehyde exposure was most severe in the p38b mutant, suggesting that the defects in the p38 pathway underlie behavioral alteration. Overall, the results indicate that exposure to toluene and formaldehyde via inhalation causes severe toxicity in Drosophila, by inducing significant alterations in gene expression and behavior, suggesting that Drosophila can be used as a potential alternative model in inhalation toxicity screening.