Toxicogenomic Approach for Marine Environment Health Assessment

Abstract

Living organisms are affected by various kinds of environmental factors originated from chemical, physical or biological sources. The speciation and species extinction are natural processes and closely related to adaptability of certain species against these factors. However, increment of human activities accelerates the environmental changes and the rapid environmental changes deprive the chance to adapt to the changed environments from the organisms and a large number of species are fading away from the earth. Neither the environmental change nor biological process is a simple issue. Therefore, sophisticated and integrated speculation on biotic and abiotic matters is necessary to understand and overcome the decrease of biodiversity or impediment of environmental health. The following is an example of phased research plan for environmental health condition improvement and biodiversity recovery; i) the elements of environmental changes should be probed and precisely analyzed, ii) the responses of organisms against the environmental changes should be considered and detected, iii) chemical and physical changes of environments and the fates of certain organisms in the future should be predicted, iv) the strategies for conservation and restoration of marine environment should be established under the prediction. In this presentation, the research projects related to marine environment assessment and marine biodiversity, which follow the above serial steps, will be introduced.