While most vertebrates die within minutes of anoxia (no oxygen), a few species can tolerate anoxia about 1000 times longer. These include the crucian carp (Carassius carassius, No: karuss), a common fish in Norway, and some turtles.
Anoxia and ischemia related diseases are the major killers in the industrialized world, and a main motivator for our research is to find out how evolution repeatedly has solved the problem of anoxic survival - something medical science has failed to do.
Our studies range fr om neural and cardiovascular physiology to gene expression. We now aim to follow up on three particularly hot trails that have recently emerged from our research. Our finding that the crucian carp has the ability to remodel its gills during hypoxia in ord er to boost oxygen uptake clearly deserves further studies. This is the first example of an adaptive and reversible gross-morphological change in a vertebrate respiratory organ. Moreover, we have just showed that the crucian carp heart continues to functi on at full speed even after 5 days without any oxygen in vivo. No other vertebrate heart comes close to such a performance during anoxia, and this finding urgently calls for more experiments. Finally, we have recenty found that the crucian carp is doing t he "impossible": it forms new cells in anoxia although a key step in DNA synthesis is thought to be oxygen dependent. In this final project, we take a broad approach. We will study both cell proliferation and synaptic plasticity by examining the expressio n of key regulatory factors in time and space. We will use the FRIBIOFYS grant for the salary of a PhD student and a researcher to run these projects. We also aim to attach MSc students to parts of the projects.