(353b) Association Rule Mining for Assessing the Relationships Among Biological Responses of Embryonic Zebrafish

The biological responses of embryonic zebrafish (including mortality) upon exposure to various nanomaterials were analyzed using association rule mining and clustering (hierarchical clustering and self-organizing maps (SOM)) analysis. The unique relationships (i.e., non-redundant association rules) among the various biological responses were identified from analysis of a nanomaterial biological interactions (NBI) knowledgebase. The biological responses were induced due to zebrafish exposure to seven different nanoparticles (carbon, cellulose, dendrimer, metal, metal oxide, polymeric, semiconductor) with average primary size range of 0.8 – 250 nm over an exposure concentration range of 0.016 – 55,000 mg/L. Pearson’s pairwise correlation analysis, along with hierarchical clustering and SOM analysis indicated that the non-redundant association rules were consistent with confirmatory tests. The analysis revealed that zebrafish olfactory regions are inter-associated and heart is inter-associated with touch response, circulation, delayed development, yolk sac edema, curved body axis, caudal fin, and pectoral fin. Spontaneous zebrafish movement was also found to correlate with yolk sac edema, axis and Somites. The results of the current study demonstrate that associate rules mining can be instrumental in suggesting means of optimizing the design of toxicity studies by streamlining the monitoring of multiparametric biological responses, improving understanding of the relationships among biological responses and for the development of nano-structure activity relationships.