Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health

五大湖沃茨和人类健康中心是一个由在五大湖地区工作的10多所大学和机构组成的联盟，由密歇根大学和托莱多大学指导。该中心是一个为期五年的努力，以进一步了解气候变化的关键风险，以及由此产生的蓝藻有害藻华（cHABs），对淡水生态系统和人类健康构成的威胁。降水量的增加、更强的风暴事件和变暖的沃茨都促进了cHAB的扩散，现在所有五个五大湖都出现了cHAB。该中心围绕几个重要主题组织。首先是解决气候变化如何影响cHAB的发生及其产生的毒素的运输。第二是了解毒素的产生以及毒素如何通过空气和水接触影响健康。三是开发新技术，加强监测和预报。该团队将与机构和社区合作伙伴合作，将调查结果整合到最先进的预测和其他数据产品中，以覆盖广泛的利益相关者受众。社区参与核心（CEC）将中心科学与相关社区联系起来，促进研究的共同设计和研究成果与利益相关者的沟通。该团队将利用该中心的研究企业，在海洋和人类健康领域招募和培训多样化的下一代科学家，包括为研究生和博士后提供支持。该中心将在研究和参与的各个方面推进包容性。总之，这些研究，参与和培训活动将推动实现理解和转化气候变化对cHAB事件的影响及其对五大湖地区人类健康的威胁的既定目标。该中心由NSF海洋科学部和国家环境健康科学研究所（NIEHS）共同支持。该中心的研究围绕四个不同但高度集成的项目进行组织。项目1旨在确定气候变化如何影响cHAB分类群的增殖和毒素生产。该项目将使用多管齐下的现场实验室实验方法来测试气候驱动的偶发事件（例如，风暴）影响几类藻毒素（微囊藻毒素、类毒素、石房蛤毒素和鱼腥藻肽）、味道和气味化合物以及藻圈相互作用。项目2旨在揭示已知和未发现的毒素和其他次级代谢物的多样性、空间和时间分布以及生物活性。该项目将使用多种方法（包括宏基因组学，转录组学和代谢组学）来表征目前在常规水质分析中使用的方法不可见的新兴毒素和生物活性化合物的多样性。项目3将研究cHAB细胞的毒素释放、气溶胶化和运输，以检验气候变化将增加人类通过摄入和吸入接触cHAB毒素的假设。将使用测量和建模相结合的方法来评估气候变化驱动的压力源对水体和cHABs产生的气溶胶中溶解和颗粒毒素分布的影响，从而能够预测气候变化下的毒素暴露。项目4将评估气雾化毒素对人类健康的影响，特别关注因哮喘等原有疾病而易受伤害的人群。项目4将检验总体假设，即暴露于雾化的氰毒素会诱导气道上皮显著炎症，哮喘患者对cHAB气溶胶特别敏感。结合其他三个项目的结果，这项工作将能够评估在当前条件下和未来气候情景下cHAB毒素对人类健康的风险。总之，五大湖中心的新鲜沃茨和人类健康的目的是了解和沟通的cHABs在面对气候变化的风险，通过合作研究，参与的努力，和培训活动。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health is a consortium of over 10 universities and agencies working in the Great Lakes region and directed by the University of Michigan and University of Toledo. The Center is a five year effort to further our understanding of the critical risk that climate change, and resulting cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (cHABs), pose to freshwater ecosystems and human health. Increased precipitation, more powerful storm events, and warming waters all encourage the proliferation of cHABs, which now occur in all five Great Lakes. The Center is organized around several overarching themes. The first is to resolve how climate change influences the occurrence of cHABs and the transport of the toxins they produce. The second is to understand toxin production and how toxins impact health, through both airborne and waterborne exposure. The third is to develop new technologies for enhanced monitoring and forecasting. In collaboration with agency and community partners the team will integrate findings into state-of-the-art forecasts and other data products that reach a wide stakeholder audience. A Community Engagement Core (CEC) will connect Center science to relevant communities, promoting co-design of research and communication of research outcomes to stakeholders. The team will leverage the Center’s research enterprise to recruit and train a diverse next generation of scientists in the field of oceans and human health, including support for graduate students and postdocs. The Center will advance inclusivity in all facets of research and engagement. Together, these research, engagement, and training activities will advance progress toward the stated goals of understanding and translating climate change effects on cHAB events and their threats to human health in the Great Lakes region. The Center is jointly supported by NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences and by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).The Center’s research is organized around four distinct but highly integrated projects. Project 1 seeks to determine how a changing climate influences the proliferation and toxin production of cHAB taxa. This project will use a multipronged field-lab experimental approach to test the hypothesis that climate-driven episodic events (e.g., storms) affect several classes of cyanotoxins (microcystins, anatoxins, saxitoxins, and anabaenopeptins), taste and odor compounds, and phycosphere interactions. Project 2 seeks to reveal the diversity, spatial and temporal distribution, and bioactivity of known and undiscovered toxins and other secondary metabolites. This project will use a combination of approaches (including metagenomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics) to characterize the diversity of emerging toxins and bioactive compounds currently invisible to methods used in routine water quality analysis. Project 3 will study toxin release from cHAB cells, aerosolization, and transport to test the hypothesis that climate change will increase human exposure to cHAB toxins through ingestion and inhalation. A combined measurement and modeling approach will be used to evaluate the impact of climate-change driven stressors on the distribution of dissolved and particulate toxins in both water bodies and aerosols generated from cHABs, enabling predictions of toxin exposure under a changing climate. Project 4 will assess the effects of aerosolized toxins on human health with a special focus on populations that are vulnerable due to pre-existing conditions, such as asthma. Project 4 will test the overall hypothesis that exposure to aerosolized cyanotoxins induces significant inflammation in the airway epithelium and that individuals with asthma are particularly susceptible to cHAB aerosols. Combined with the results of the other three projects, this work will enable assessment of human health risks of cHAB toxins under current conditions and future climate scenarios. In summary, the Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health aims to understand and communicate the risks of cHABs in the face of climate change through collaborative research, engagement efforts, and training initiatives.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.