ABSTRACT: This series was used for two studies: Study 1: Recently it was discovered that the perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) detected in wildlife, such as fish-eating birds, had a greater proportion of linear PFOS (L-PFOS) than the manufactured technical product (T-PFOS), which contains linear and branched isomers. This suggests toxicological studies based on T-PFOS data may inaccurately assess exposure risk to wildlife. To determine if PFOS effects were influenced by isomer content we compared the transcriptional profiles of cultured chicken embryonic hepatocytes (CEH) exposed to either L-PFOS or T-PFOS using Agilent microarrays. At equal concentrations (10 ?M), T-PFOS altered the expression of more transcripts (340, >1.5 fold change, p<0.05) compared to L-PFOS (130 transcripts). Higher concentrations of L-PFOS (40 ?M) were also less transcriptionally disruptive (217 transcripts) than T-PFOS at 10 ?M. Functional analysis showed that L-PFOS and T-PFOS affected genes involved in lipid metabolism, hepatic system development and cellular growth and proliferation. Pathway and interactome analysis suggested that genes may be affected through the RXR receptor, oxidative stress response, TP53 signaling, MYC signaling, Wnt/?-catenin signaling and PPAR? and SREBP receptors. In all functional categories and pathways examined, the response elicited by T-PFOS was greater than L-PFOS. These data show that T-PFOS elicits a greater transcriptional response in CEH than L-PFOS alone and demonstrates the importance of considering the isomer-specific toxicological properties of PFOS when assessing exposure risk. Study 2: In many bird populations, concentrations of perfluoroundanoic acid (PFUdA) are second only to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) among perfluoroalkyl compounds. Here, we used microarrays to characterize the transcriptional response of cultured chicken embryonic hepatocytes (CEH) to PFUdA and compared it to the response induced by PFOS. At non-cytotoxic doses, PFUdA (1 or 10 ?M) disrupted the expression of more genes (854) than PFOS (447, at 10 or 40 ?M) in CEH. Using functional, pathway and interactome analysis we identified several potentially important modes-of-action (MoAs) for PFUdA and some associated key events, including the suppression of the acute-phase response (APR) through peroxisome proliferator activated receptor activation. We then measured the expression of five APR genes, fibrinogen alpha (fga), fibrinogen gamma (fgg), thrombin (f2), plasminogen (plg), and protein C (proC), in the liver of chicken embryos exposed in ovo to PFUdA. The expression of fga, f2, and proC were down-regulated in embryo livers (100 or 1000 ng/g, p<0.1) as predicted from microarray analysis, whereas fibrinogen gamma (fgg) was up-regulated and plg was not significantly affected. Our results demonstrate PFUdA is more transcriptionally disruptive than PFOS in CEH. Additionally, we identified APR suppression as a potentially important and environmentally relevant MoA. These findings suggest in ovo exposure of birds to PFUdA could lead to post-hatch developmental deficiencies, such as impaired immune response.