Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-04-30

Toxin Production in Cyanobacteria

Objective



In many lakes and rivers toxic cyanobacteria are found. This causes severe problems for recreation and drinking water production. The toxicity of cyanobacteria is found to be highly vanable. Toxic blooms can change ftom toxic to non-toxic and vise versa. It is not clear how far this is caused by a succession of toxic and non-toxic strains within one species or, by the changes in toxicity of one population. Morphological analyses and physiological knowledge cannot give a solution here. Little is known of the relation of this toxin with the food-web in fresh waters. Is this toxin produced to prevent grazing, what is the distribution of this toxin in the food-web. In the synthesis of Microcystin the toxin produced by the cyanobacterium Microcystis the enzyme microcystin-synthetase plays a crucial role. Recently two institutes of this network have sequenced the genes if this enzyme. With this information it becomes possible to produce probes and construct-strains which are extremely important tools for physiological and ecological research concerning toxin production in continuous cultures and in natural systems. In this mul- tidisciplinary research programme molecular biological tools will be developed and used to unravel the condi- tions under which this toxin is produced and what its influence is on thefood-web of the natural systems.
A network-programme has been developed to train young post-docs to incorporate molecular biological, physiological and ecological theories and techniques to study one problem: toxin production in cyanobacteria. - The programme contains training on the job, short training couses, working visits, and an 8 week workshop.
Important topics are:
- The production of DNA-probes and reporter strains to be used in physiology and ecology to recognize toxin production in laboratory and field populations.
- Toxin production will carefully compared with ecological relevant conditions in laboratory and field systems.
- In an eight-week field traing-course the whole team of the network is training to use all information and molecular tools to study the toxicity of a field population of Microcystis and to compare this with the results of the physiological and enclosure studies.
.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

Data not available

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

NET - Research network contracts

Coordinator

Universiteit van Amsterdam
EU contribution
No data
Address
127,Nieuwe Achtergracht
1018 WS Amsterdam
Netherlands

See on map

Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (6)

My booklet 0 0