Development of molecular markers to identify environmental impacts of oil pollutants

Identification and monitoring of potential impacts of oil pollutants is indispensable to avoid adverse effects on ecosystems and natural fish populations. The proposed Norway-Germany bilateral collaboration will focus on developing the stickleback as a bi omonitoring and experimental model, to identify environmental impacts of oil pollutants. The stickleback is increasingly being used as a model species in ecotoxicology, and is the only convenient genome-sequenced fish species with European environmental r elevance. Using the stickleback model, microarrays and other established molecular biomarkers will be used to evaluate the impact of oil pollutants on aquatic wildlife. The proposed Norway-Germany mobility grant will enable staff and a Ph.D. student from NVH to visit the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) which is Germany´s foremost institute in the field of environmental research. Dr. Stefan Scholz at the Department of Bioanalytical Ecotoxicology is heading a research group dedicated to a nalysing gene regulation in response to chemicals in model organisms, and has considerable expertise in microarray techniques. The advantage of applying microarrays in aquatic toxicology is that they provide the means to (i) identify sentinel molecular ma rkers that could be used to indicate an exposure to complex mixtures of oil contaminants (ii) identify major molecular/cellular pathways induced by oil contaminants (iii) identify the predominant groups of chemicals likely to cause adverse effects, and (i v) link disturbed molecular/cellular pathways to potential implications for individual fitness and population development. The anticipated NFR/DAAD collaboration would facilitate our institute (NVH) in acquiring expertise in the application of microarray technology to ecotoxicology. This would be of strategic importance to our group, and be especially beneficial to the exchange Ph.D. student, whose thesis project is on the stickleback as an indicator species of oil