RESUMO
Abstract@#Benzo [a] pyrene ( B [a] P ) is a well-recognized environmental pollutant. Exposure to B[a]P elicits many adverse biological effects, including tumorigenesis, immunosuppression, teratogenicity, and hormonal effects. In addition to B [a] P exposure-induced genetic damages, a growing number of studies demonstrate that epigenetic changes play an important role in chemically induced carcinogenesis. In order to provide better understanding of epigenetic changes of B [a] P and their potential association with genotoxic endpoints, this review summarizes the advances in the applications of functional genomics in the research of B [a] P toxicity, including functional genomics techniques, regulation of human genome expression, DNA sequence variability, model organisms research, and bioinformatics studies, so as to provide insights into the management of B [a] P exposure-induced health injuries and use of genomics techniques to unravel the mechanisms underlying the toxicity of other environmental pollutants.