TyPol - a new methodology for organic compounds clustering based on their molecular characteristics and environmental behavior

Rémi Servien (1, 2) , Laure Mamy (3) , Ziang Li (4) , Virginie Rossard (2) , Eric Latrille (2) , Fabienne Bessac (5) , Dominique Patureau (2) , Pierre Benoit (4)

1 ToxAlim - ToxAlim
2 LBE - Laboratoire de Biotechnologie de l'Environnement [Narbonne]
3 PESSAC - Physicochimie et Ecotoxicologie des SolS d'Agrosystèmes Contaminés
4 EGC - Environnement et Grandes Cultures
5 GMO - Groupe THEO (LCPQ)

Following legislation, the assessment of the environmental risks of 30 000 to 100 000 chemical substances is required for their registration dossiers. However, a very small proportion of these chemicals was already studied through actual measurements because it is time-consuming and/or cost prohibitive. Therefore, the objective of this work was to develop a methodology to classify organic compounds, and their degradation products, according to both their behavior in the environment and their molecular properties. The strategy relies on partial least squares analysis and hierarchical clustering. The calculation of molecular descriptors is based on an in silico approach, and the environmental endpoints (i.e. environmental parameters) are extracted from several available databases and literature. The classification of 215 organic compounds in 6 different clusters showed that the combination of some specific molecular descriptors was directly related to a particular behavior in the environment. TyPol also provided an analysis of similarities between organic compounds and their metabolites. Among the 24 metabolites that were inputted, 58% were found in the same cluster as their parents. The robustness of the method was tested and shown to be good. TyPol can help to predict the environmental behavior of a "new" compound (parent compound or metabolite) from its affiliation to one cluster but also to select representative substances from a large data set in order to answer some specific questions regarding their behavior in the environment.

Mots clés: Pesticides Metabolites Clustering Molecular modeling Environmental fate Partial least squares

Domaines: Statistiques [math.ST]; Théorie [stat.TH]

Rémi Servien, Laure Mamy, Ziang Li, Virginie Rossard, Eric Latrille, et al.. TyPol - a new methodology for organic compounds clustering based on their molecular characteristics and environmental behavior. 2013. ⟨hal-00924015v1⟩