Marine environmental impact of oil spill on vertebrate: gene expression changes in marine medaka, Oryzias javanicus

Abstract

The accidents like an oil spill give the enormous effects on marine and coastal ecosystem as well as individual organism. In December 2007, an oil spill in marine crane Hebei Spirit polluted the mid west coast and it spread very fast throughout the whole west coastal regions. In this study we aimed to discover the marker genes which expressions were changed by exposure to ecotoxicants or pollutants using the marine medaka (Oryzias javanicus) microarray and to develop as biomarkers for the biological responses against environmental pollution like oil spills. Also, we investigated the effects of organic pollutant on transcriptional changes after fishes were exposed to bisphenol A, polychlorinated biphenyl, 17 beta-estradiol as well as WAFs (water accommodated fractions) from crude oil and compared the profiles. These results suggested that transcriptional changes of genes could be good biomarkers to detect stress levels in O. javanicus and provided the general translation about effect of oil contamination on marine organism. And the compact microarray chip development including new biomarkers could be very helpful in detecting of ecotoxicological stress responses.