The present study describes pilot testing of a high throughput compatible transcriptomics assay with larval fathead minnows. One day post hatch fathead minnows were exposed to eleven different concentrations of three metals, three selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and four neonicotinoid-like compounds for 24 h and concentration response modeling was applied to whole body gene expression data. Transcriptomics-based points of departure (tPODs) were consistently lower than effect concentrations reported in apical endpoint studies in fish. However, larval fathead minnow-based tPODs were not always lower than concentrations reported to elicit apical toxicity in other aquatic organisms like crustaceans or insects. Random in silico subsampling of data from the pilot assays was used to evaluate various assay design and acceptance considerations such as transcriptome coverage, number of replicate individuals to sequence per treatment, and minimum number of differentially expressed genes to produce a reliable tPOD estimate.

This dataset is associated with the following publication: Villeneuve, D., M. Le, M. Hazemi, A. Biales, D. Bencic, K. Bush, R. Flick, J. Martinson, M. Morshead, K. Santana Rodriguez, K. Vitense, and K. Flynn. Pilot testing and optimization of a larval fathead minnow high throughput transcriptomics assay. Current Research in Toxicology. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, 4: 100099, (2022).