PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 2: At the Crossroads of Genomics and Ecology: The Potential for a Canary on a Chip
Organized by: RD Klaper
Tuesday, August 5. 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM, SITCC Meeting Room 106.
Aquatic Species in Ecosystems at Risk: Genomic Approaches for Assessing Normal and Abnormal Physiological Responses.
Guillette, Louis*,1, Helbing, Caren2, Iguchi, Taisen3, 1 University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA2 University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada3 National Institute of Basic Biology, Okasaki, Japan
ABSTRACT- There has been a dramatic increase in the data available on the genomic make-up of a number of species in the past decade. With the stimulus of the human genome project, techniques and technology has provided great advances in our ability to obtain genetic information from a wide range of species, and there are extensive databases for members of all vertebrate classes (e.g., fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals), with the exception of reptiles. Recent advances in our laboratories have begun to fill the gap in this information for reptiles. Given the amazing improvement in technologies for obtaining sequence information and the rapidly expanding technologies for their use, we have begun a research program that focuses on the development of new genomics and proteomics information and tools for a number of keystone species in subtropical wetland ecosystems. These tools, such as mircoarrays, genomic and proteomic databases, and bioinformatic approaches for the appropriate use of these tools, will be used in studies that examine organisms living in ecosystems at risk, such as most aquatic systems in Florida and the southeastern USA. The major focus of this project is to take these studies out of the laboratory and into real world situation examining non traditional species, such as alligators, mosquitofish, ranid frogs and turtles. The tools developed would be of a design that would allow worldwide use and collaboration. We currently have functional microarrays for frogs and several small fish species. Major questions currently being tested include studies of natural and induced metamorphosis in amphibians and natural sex determination and sex reversal in fishes and reptiles.
Key words: contaminants, genomics, physiology, microarray