Jason O’Brien
Adjunct Research Professor
- Email Jason O’Brien
- 613-998-7384
Current Research
- Animal Alternatives for Chemical Testing: Chemical safety testing using traditional methods is slow, expensive, and uses countless laboratory animals. In order to streamline and modernize this process we develop and apply more efficient animal alternative methods for identifying and characterizing chemicals that are potentially dangerous to wildlife. We develop new ecologically relevant cell lines, cell culturing techniques and embryo models for rapidly testing chemicals. We also develop assays for measuring a variety of toxicologically relevant effects in cell and embryos, including genomic and biochemical endpoints.
- Regulatory Toxicogenomics: Changes in gene expression are among the earliest detectable effects in cells and organisms after exposure to toxic chemicals. These effects can be detected much more rapidly and with greater sensitivity than “traditional” toxicological endpoints, such as morphological deformities, tumors and mortality. Our research investigates how changes in gene expression can be used to identify and characterize chemicals that are harmful to wildlife, using methods that are much more efficient and ethical compared to traditional toxicity tests.
- Modernization of chemical risk assessment by regulatory agencies to make use of novel molecular toxicology data: This work involves consulting with national and international regulatory bodies to develop and promote novel approaches for incorporating cellular and molecular data into the regulatory chemical safety testing process.
Selected Publications
Johnson KJ, Auerbach SS, Stevens T, Barton-Maclaren TS, Costa E, Currie RA, Dalmas Wilk D, Haq S, Rager JE, Reardon AJF, Wehmas L, Williams A, O’Brien J, Yauk C, LaRocca JL, Pettit S. 2022. A Transformative Vision for an Omics-Based Regulatory Chemical Testing Paradigm. Toxicol Sci. 190(2):127-132. doi: 10.1093/toxsci/kfac097
Lee H, Stead JDH, Williams A, Cortés Ramírez SA, Atlas E, Mennigen JA, O’Brien JM, Yauk C. 2024. Empirical Characterization of False Discovery Rates of Differentially Expressed Genes and Transcriptomic Benchmark Concentrations in Zebrafish Embryos. Environ Sci Technol. 58(14):6128-6137. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.3c10543
Sharin T, Gyasi H, Jones SP, Crump D, O’Brien JM. 2021. Concentration- and time-dependent induction of Cyp1a and DNA damage response by benzo(a)pyrene in LMH three-dimensional spheroids. Environ Mol Mutagen. 62(5):319-327. doi: 10.1002/em.22433
Pagé-Larivière F, Crump D, O’Brien JM. 2019. Transcriptomic points-of-departure from short-term exposure studies are protective of chronic effects for fish exposed to estrogenic chemicals. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 378:114634. doi: 10.1016/j.taap.2019.114634.