Toxicoinformatics Today

Toxicoinformatics represents the synthesis of several different approaches to archiving, organizing, and navigating complex data dealing with toxicologic studies. One approach would be to consider toxicoinformatics simply a subset of the bioinformatics field, a collection of data generated in an attempt to understand toxicological mechanisms. This may be a helpful generality, but does not capture the ultimate scope of the field. For those reading the opening quote above, the reality has already grasped them that most in toxicology already pursue toxicoinformatics on a daily basis. Toxicoinformatics brings together many diverse scientists, from computational toxicologists, to pharmacokinetic modelers, to microarray specialists. Initially, the focus was on analysis of genomic data generated following exposure of various model organisms to toxicants. This has grown to include many associated technologies and disciplines. The compiled lists of resources include 20 books, 15 journals, 18 manuscripts, two organizations, and eight databases or websites, which can be helpful in exploring toxicoinformatics. Navigating toxicoinformatic resources requires a command of numerous websites, but paramount among these sites are those that compile many helpful sites and effectively serve as gateways. In this field, the ToxNet website serves this purpose and provides a number of useful sites and search engines to help investigators find toxicoinformatic resources.