Targeted analytical toxicology: Simultaneous determination of 17α-ethynylestradiol and the estrogen-induced vitellogenin biomarker

In most toxicological studies, chemical concentrations and its biological/molecular response (biomarker) levels are often quantified separately. We report a method, named as Targeted Analytical Toxicology (TAT), for the simultaneous determination of levels of chemicals and protein biomarkers in organisms by UPLC/ESI-MS/MS on the basis of targeted proteomics. The TAT method is successfully applied to detect the concentrations of 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) and EE2-induced vitellogenin (a biomarker for estrogens) in male zebrafish exposed to EE2. It is expected for TAT to have broad application in toxicology, especially in environmental toxicology, due to its high sensitivity, accuracy, reproducibility, high throughput, and the savings of time, cost and labor.