Maitre, LéaBustamante Pineda, MarionaHernández Ferrer, CarlesVives Usano, Marta, 1990-Ruiz-Arenas, CarlosPelegrí-Sisó, DolorsCasas Sanahuja, MaribelSunyer Deu, JordiNieuwenhuijsen, Mark J.Urquiza, José M.Borràs, EvaSabidó Aguadé, Eduard, 1981-Estivill, Xavier, 1955-González, Juan RamónVrijheid, Martine2023-01-102023-01-102022Maitre L, Bustamante M, Hernández-Ferrer C, Thiel D, Lau CE, Siskos AP et al. Multi-omics signatures of the human early life exposome. Nat Commun. 2022 Nov 21;13(1):7024. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-34422-22041-1723http://hdl.handle.net/10230/55243Environmental exposures during early life play a critical role in life-course health, yet the molecular phenotypes underlying environmental effects on health are poorly understood. In the Human Early Life Exposome (HELIX) project, a multi-centre cohort of 1301 mother-child pairs, we associate individual exposomes consisting of >100 chemical, outdoor, social and lifestyle exposures assessed in pregnancy and childhood, with multi-omics profiles (methylome, transcriptome, proteins and metabolites) in childhood. We identify 1170 associations, 249 in pregnancy and 921 in childhood, which reveal potential biological responses and sources of exposure. Pregnancy exposures, including maternal smoking, cadmium and molybdenum, are predominantly associated with child DNA methylation changes. In contrast, childhood exposures are associated with features across all omics layers, most frequently the serum metabolome, revealing signatures for diet, toxic chemical compounds, essential trace elements, and weather conditions, among others. Our comprehensive and unique resource of all associations ( https://helixomics.isglobal.org/ ) will serve to guide future investigation into the biological imprints of the early life exposome.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34422-2Prognostic markersRisk factorsSystems biologyinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess