Objective
OBJECTIVES:
General objectives of the research:
- To establish reliable biomarkers which allow (i) an assessment of pollution risks and (ii) the estimation of the health of animals in their marine milieu.
- To prepare the scientific prerequisites for guidelines to be made public to guarantee a sustainable use of the sea. As such, the present project concentrates on the development of novel molecular biological techniques to monitor the environmental quality of the marine milieu. By this approach, the changes in different pollutant levels in the sea water will be assessed before they cause irreparable damage to the communities.
Marker organisms: Sponges, ubiquitously occurring organisms, will be used for the first time to establish novel biomarkers to estimate different types of pollution in the sea.
Biomarkers: The effect of environmental stress on sponges will be studied using two types of biomarkers: (i) biomarkers of exposure (here: heat shock protein HSP70 and DnaJ protein homolog), which are indicative for an exposure to an environmental stress but not for its possibly adverse, toxic effects on these organisms, and (ii) biomarkers of effect (here: apoptosis-inducible MA-3 protei homolog), which are indicative both for exposure and occurrence of adverse (toxic) effects.
Specific objectives of the proposed research are:
- To determine the relationship between levels of pollutants, levels of stress and health state of benthic communities by screening for stress proteins in different sponges used as target organisms of the communities and searching for biological and cytological effects. The stress proteins (biomarkers of exposure heat shock protein-70 and Dnal protein homolog, and the marker for apoptosis, the MA-3 protein homolog (biomarker of effect), will be monitored.
- To apply the multixenobiotic resistance mechanism in marine sponges for the evaluation of environmental pollution by toxic compounds.
- To study the effects of the stress on the production of bioactive substances sponges.
- To establish routine assay systems using molecular probes. EXPLOITATlON: Publication in refereed scientific journals and in patent applications.
Presentation at scientific meetings. Industrial perspectives: Development of routine test systems [HSP70, DnaJhOm, MA 3hom, determination of multixenobiotic resistance pump].
BENEFITS 11 S: This innovative, in vivo and in vitro approach allows - the determination of the effects of pollutants in aquatic environments, - the assessment of changes in pollutant levels in sea water7 by fast, low cost, efficient and standardized protocols, and - a prediction of the health of animal populations for coming socio-economic developments.
EUROPEAN DIMENSION: This project can only be carried out at the Community level because the expertise as such is not available in a single EU country. The three applying groups complement each other; German partner: molecular biology, cell biology of sponges; French partner: taxonomy, cytology; Spanish partner: microscopy, bioactivity, benthic ecology.
Opportunities for education and training: Only a few places in Europe can offer their laboratories for this kind of research for scientists and students. KEYWORDS (max 10): Biomarker, Heat shock protein, Multixenobiotic resistance, Sponges Pollution. Ecosystem health, Sustainable use
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.
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.
- natural sciences biological sciences biochemistry biomolecules proteins
- natural sciences biological sciences cell biology
- natural sciences physical sciences optics microscopy
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences environmental sciences pollution
- natural sciences biological sciences molecular biology
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Coordinator
55099 MAINZ
Germany
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.