Skip to main content
Vai all'homepage della Commissione europea (si apre in una nuova finestra)
italiano italiano
CORDIS - Risultati della ricerca dell’UE
CORDIS
Contenuto archiviato il 2024-05-24

Deep-sea hydrothermal vents: a natural pollution laboratory

Obiettivo

Problems to be solved (while also addressing the relevant EU policies)
From an applied perspective, the hydrothermal environment provides a useful analogue of anthropogenically polluted marine environments, with the notable and important difference that the complex biological communities which live around deep-sea vents can be traced back in the fossil record to at least the Mesozoic era, thus having allowed sufficient time for the evolution of special adaptations to evolve to combat environmental toxicity. These novel biochemical and molecular adaptations have the potential for important biotechnological discoveries. VENTOX thus has important wealth creation and quality of life implications.
Scientific objectives and approach
The aim of this research project is to carry out innovative research into the specialised adaptations and processes found in representatives of the mid-Atlantic deep-sea hydrothermal vent fauna and its associated microbial populations. The goal being to identify those special adaptations that vent organism posses that have evolved to deal with their highly stressful and toxic environment. An important part of VENTOX will be the establishment of a shore-based deep-sea laboratory in the Azores (LABHORTA), to which cages of vent organisms will be transferred at intervals to provide research material. Another innovative component of the VENTOX project is the use of the IPOCAMP hyperbaric chamber in which vent organisms will be studied under natural pressure conditions. From a fundamental perspective, considerable effort will go into establishing the micro-scale distribution of vent communities, and quantifying the chemical conditions under which specific species live and the toxicant burdens found in their tissues. These measurements will provide the basis for the molecular, biochemical and physiological studies which will be carried out mainly at LabHorta on vent crustaceans, mussels and gastropods, to provide valuable new insights into their heavy metal, pH, temperature, CO2 and sulphide tolerances, bacterial and mega faunal production rates, rates of DNA damage and repair, and the identification of endosymbiont-mediated detoxification processes relevant to bioremediation.
Expected impacts
While the fundamental aim of VENTOX is to extend our knowledge of the conditions experienced by vent organisms and the special adaptations they have evolved to resist toxicant stress, an important secondary objective is the generation of findings and material that will be of relevance to SME-based exploitation in the fields of biochemistry (DNA repair enzymes), deep-sea pressure technology (flow-through pressure chamber, IPOCAMP) and microbial biotechnology (e.g. detoxification and bioremediation).

Campo scientifico (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifica i progetti con EuroSciVoc, una tassonomia multilingue dei campi scientifici, attraverso un processo semi-automatico basato su tecniche NLP. Cfr.: Il Vocabolario Scientifico Europeo.

È necessario effettuare l’accesso o registrarsi per utilizzare questa funzione

Programma(i)

Programmi di finanziamento pluriennali che definiscono le priorità dell’UE in materia di ricerca e innovazione.

Argomento(i)

Gli inviti a presentare proposte sono suddivisi per argomenti. Un argomento definisce un’area o un tema specifico per il quale i candidati possono presentare proposte. La descrizione di un argomento comprende il suo ambito specifico e l’impatto previsto del progetto finanziato.

Invito a presentare proposte

Procedura per invitare i candidati a presentare proposte di progetti, con l’obiettivo di ricevere finanziamenti dall’UE.

Dati non disponibili

Meccanismo di finanziamento

Meccanismo di finanziamento (o «Tipo di azione») all’interno di un programma con caratteristiche comuni. Specifica: l’ambito di ciò che viene finanziato; il tasso di rimborso; i criteri di valutazione specifici per qualificarsi per il finanziamento; l’uso di forme semplificate di costi come gli importi forfettari.

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinatore

NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL
Contributo UE
Nessun dato
Indirizzo
Empress Dock
SO14 3ZH SOUTHAMPTON
Regno Unito

Mostra sulla mappa

Costo totale

I costi totali sostenuti dall’organizzazione per partecipare al progetto, compresi i costi diretti e indiretti. Questo importo è un sottoinsieme del bilancio complessivo del progetto.

Nessun dato

Partecipanti (9)

Il mio fascicolo 0 0