Upload
bm-jenssen
View
212
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
27th Congress of the newEuropean Society ofComparative Biochemistry and Physiology
Alessandria (Italy) — Sept. 5–9, 2010
Biological effects of climatic changes and pollution:From biomarkers to system biology
Session 9: Effects of environment changes and pollution on Artic and Antarctic organisms
INVITED LECTURE
1.Effects of environmental changes and pollution on Arctic andAntarctic organisms
B.M. Jenssen (NorwegianUniversityof Science andTechnology,Norway)
Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems are threatened by anthropogenicactivity at increasing rates. Global warming, persistent organic pollutants(POPs), exploitation of marine resources and petroleum activity arecurrently the major threats to these fragile ecosystems. Pollution istransported to Polar environments via long-range atmospheric transport,and the rate of global warming has been claimed to be very high in theArctic. POPs identified in Polar ecosystems originate from the industria-lized and heavily populated areas of the Earth. Many of these POPs haveendocrine disrupting properties. They may therefore interfere withphysiological adaptations of Polar organisms to their extreme environ-ments and to environmental change. Even though environmental levels ofPOPs generally are much lower in Polar environments than in the moredensely populated areas on Earth, levels of POPs in Polar top-predators arevery high. This is due to the biomagnification of these compounds. Highlevels of POPs have been associated with endocrine disruption in severalendemic Arctic top predators. The thyroid and the reproductive hormonesystems seem to be particularly susceptible to endocrine disruption. Thethyroid hormone system is involved in several physiological processes thatare important for evolutionary adaptation and acclimatization to environ-mental changes. Thyroid hormones are also involved in growth anddevelopment, and in cognitive and behavioural processes. Even relativelylow levels of POPs have been associatedwith thyroid hormone disruption.Endocrine disruptive effects at the organismal level may cascade up thebiological system, resulting in reduced abilities of Polar ecosystems torespond adequately to other anthropogenic environmental changes.
doi:10.1016/j.cbpa.2010.06.114
ORAL PRESENTATIONS
2.Characterization of new biomarkers from the Antarctic ciliateEuplotes focardii by a transcriptomic approach
S. Pucciarelli, R.R. Devaraj, S. Barchetta, Ting Yu, A. La Terza, C. Miceli(University of Camerino, Italy)
The stable cold Antarctic coastal seawaters host a rich variety ofeukaryotic microbes, a large fraction of which is represented byspecies of ciliates, in particular Euplotes. Among the Euplotesspecies isolated from Terra Nova Bay, E. focardii shows strictlypsychrophilic and stenothermal phenotypes, including optimalsurvival and multiplication rates at 4–5 °C, that denote an ancientcolonization of the Antarctic environment. The successful coloni-zation of the Antarctic habitat by E. focardii should be related tothe evolution of macromolecules able to function at low tempera-tures. To understand the molecular basis responsible for cold-adaptation, we started the characterization of the genome andtranscriptome from E. focardii. At present we sequenced∼15 Gbases, representing about 7200 genes. To predict thefunction of these sequences, we performed a blastx batchoperation with Standalone BLAST. To verify if this stenothermalorganism constitutively induces genes involved in the thermalresponse, we selected the sequences that gave hits to stressproteins from the transcriptome blastx result file. We found fourdifferent transcripts corresponding to Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs)70, and two corresponding to the Heat Shock transcription Factors(HSF). A deeper analysis revealed the presence of transcripts thatshared similarity to metallothioneins, DNA damage repair factors,proteins induced by oxidative and osmotic stresses, and proteinsresponding to centrifugal and shear forces. Moreover, we alsofound transcripts that blasted with proteins responding to generalstresses. We are currently investigating the expression variation ofthese genes determined by environmental stresses. These results
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A
j ourna l homepage: www.e lsev ie r.com/ locate /cbpa
Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Part A 157 (2010) S40–S41
1095-6433/$ – see front matter