The purpose of this study was twofold. First, we sought to identify candidate markers of exposure to antiandrogens
by analyzing endogenous metabolite profiles in the urine of male fathead minnows (mFHM,
Pimephales promelas). Based on earlier work, we hypothesized that unidentified lipids in the urine of mFHM
were selectively responsive to exposure to androgen receptor antagonists,which is otherwise difficult to confirm
using established fish toxicity assays. A second goal was to evaluate the feasibility of non-lethally and repeatedly
sampling urine from individual mFHMs over the time course of response to a chemical exposure. Accordingly, we
exposed mFHM to the model anti-androgens vinclozolin or flutamide. Urine was collected from each fish at
48 hour intervals over the course of a 14 day exposure. Parallel experiments were conducted with mFHM exposed
to bisphenol A or control water. The frequent handling/sampling regime did not cause apparent adverse
effects on the fish. Endogenous metabolite profiling was conducted with gas chromatography–mass spectrometry
(GC–MS), which exhibited lower variation for the urinary metabolome than was found in earlier work with
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Specifically, for inter- and intra-individual variations, the median
spectrum-wide relative standard deviation (RSD) was 32.6% and 33.3%, respectively, for GC–MS analysis of
urine from unexposed mFHM. These results compared favorably with similar measurements of urine from other
model species, including the Sprague Dawley rat. In addition, GC–MS allowed us to identify several lipids
(e.g., certain saturated fatty acids) in mFHM urine as candidate markers of exposure to androgen receptor
antagonists.
The dataset that is uploaded here is the complete processed data from GC-MS instrument.
This dataset is associated with the following publication:
Collette , T., D. Skelton, J. Davis , J. Cavallin , K. Jensen , M. Kahl , G. Ankley , G. Ankley , D. Martinovic-Weigelt, and D. Ekman. Metabolite profiles of repeatedly sampled urine from male fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) contain unique lipid signatures following exposure to anti-androgens. COMPARATIVE BIOCHEMISTRY AND PHYSIOLOGY - PART D: GENOMICS AND PROTEOMICS. Elsevier BV, AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, 19: 190-198, (2016).