해양생물 위해성평가를 위한 바이오마커 개발

Abstract

Southern coastal area of Korea has been directly affected by various land runoff and sewage pollutants due to its half-closed shape and specially population and industrial complexes converged into the costal areas. Although the water pollution and the damages into ecosystem became serious because of the massive development of coastal area, the government policies for environmental improvement have focused on only land-base. Global program of action (GPA) declared by 108 countries and EU on 1995 has mentioned that each country should protect marine environment, preventing from impairing of aquatic environment by ground activity. In addition, they requested the associated countries to make 'National Plan of Action (NPA)' corresponding to GPA but we have not even identified the actual state and have a limited information on marine environment and ecosystem of Korea. For the risk assessment of marine organisms by pollutants, ecotoxicological studies on individual toxicant and marine sediments should be advanced. The freshwater organisms are mainly studied for the technological development for toxicity assessment and technical approaches for general toxicity, reproductive toxicity, genotoxicity and immunotoxicity have been established. Recently bacterial biosensor and DNA chip for the monitoring of toxicant and gene expression analysis were developed by research group in Korea. Most of toxicological studies on marine organisms were ranged in selection of test species, culture of test animal and basic bioassay for the specific marine species. The various biomarkers development for toxicity assessment thus has been needed and the biomarkers studies using genes are activated by research institutes and universities. At the first stage of developing biomarkers for marine toxicant, we have focused on cloning of toxicity responsive genes and the gene expression analyses and also we are developing DNA chip using toxicant-specific genes and single-cell gel electrophoresis ass