NTR: endocrine-disrupting chemical

[nicolevasilevsky]

New term requested: endocrine-disrupting chemical
Suggested text definition: Chemicals that can interfere with endocrine (or hormone) systems at certain doses.
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor
Example: CHEBI:76988 - xenoestrogen

Related to ticket: EnvironmentOntology/environmental-exposure-ontology#6

[cmungall]

Thinking about relationship to existing 'hormone' term in CHEBI...

The ED role can be realized in different ways:

• mimicking endogenous hormones (as agonist or antagonist)
• altering metabolism of endogenous hormones
• altering natural hormone receptors

Should we have 3 subclasses for these? What would their relationship to existing CHEBI roles be?

current polyhierarchy:

  is_a CHEBI:24432 ! biological role
   is_a CHEBI:33280 ! molecular messenger
    is_a CHEBI:24621 ! hormone *** 
   is_a CHEBI:52210 ! pharmacological role
    is_a CHEBI:48705 ! agonist
     is_a CHEBI:24621 ! hormone *** 

CHEBI treats "hormone" generically as inclusive of non-natural as well as endogenous. I recommend the CHEBI def of hormone is changed (in phrasing but not in meaning):

"Originally referring to an endogenous compound that is formed in specialized organ or group of cells and carried to another organ or group of cells, in the same organism, upon which it has a specific regulatory function, the term is now commonly used to include non-endogenous, semi-synthetic and fully synthetic analogues of such compounds."

OBO definitions should not start with discursive history of terminology, they should concisely and precisely state the meaning, following a genus-differentia form. Additional gloss and clarification can be placed at the end.

The current parent is agonist, so a candidate def would be

"An agonist that is transported by the circulatory system and executes a regulatory function, or any compound that mimics this."

(OK, that could probably do with work).

Are hormones always agonists? The parent def is also a little awkward:

CHEBI:48705 ! agonist [DEF: "Substance which binds to cell receptors normally responding to naturally occurring substances and which produces a response of its own."]

[G-Owen]

Have now created endocrine disruptor (CHEBI:138015) and populated it with some classes and a few individual compounds.
Will leave the ticket open while we think about rephrasing our definition of 'hormone'!