Missing genomic resources for the next generation of environmental risk assessment

Abstract

Environmental risk assessment traditionally relies on a wide range of in vivo testing to assess the potential hazard of chemicals in the environment. These tests are often time-consuming, costly and can cause test organism suffering. Recent developments of reliable low-cost alternatives, both in vivo- and in silico-based, opened the door to reconsider current toxicity assessment. However, many of these new approach methodologies (NAMs) rely on high quality annotated genomes for surrogate species of the regulatory risk assessment. Currently, lacking genomic information slows the process of NAM development. Here, we present a phylogenetically resolved overview of missing genomic resources for surrogate species within regulatory ecotoxicological risk assessment. We call for an organized and systematic effort within the (regulatory) ecotoxicological community to provide these missing genomic resources. Further, we discuss the potential of a standardized genomic surrogate species landscape to enable a robust and non-animal reliant ecotoxicological risk assessment in the systems ecotoxicology era.