Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health

伍兹霍尔海洋与人类健康中心是一项为期五年的努力，旨在解决气候变化如何影响有害藻华(HAB)动态和人类暴露于HAB毒素这一严重的全球人类健康威胁的问题。总体目标是通过加强对气候和海洋过程如何影响产生毒素的赤潮的强度和分布的了解来保护公众健康，并了解即使接触到低水平的强效神经毒素也会带来潜在的健康风险，特别是在生命的敏感阶段。三个不同的研究项目将探索水华发生的环境控制，创建数值模型来预测人类在不断变化的气候条件下接触毒素的情况，以及研究赤潮毒素对大脑的影响。该中心的行政核心将把这些项目联系起来，鼓励对规划、整合、沟通和加强不同视角的公开讨论，并对方案所有方面的进展进行严格的评估。该中心的社区参与核心将促进研究与教育的整合，以及资源管理人员和其他利益攸关方的参与。该中心将提高公共卫生界对新出现的卫生保健问题的认识，并为K-12课堂和卫生保健提供者开发新的教育材料和互动活动。该中心由美国国家科学基金会海洋科学部和美国国家环境健康科学研究所(NIEHS)共同支持。中心将专注于两个关键的赤潮生物分类群：链状亚历山大藻(Alexandrium Catenella)和拟菱形藻(Passo-nitzschia spp.)，前者产生导致麻痹性贝毒(PSP)的萨克毒素，后者产生导致遗忘性贝毒(ASP)综合征的软骨藻酸；这两个分类群都在地理上扩张。申请者开发的新的、有针对性的、有效的和数据丰富的采样方法，并在自然环境中现场应用，揭示了对链球菌种群动态的新控制，并确定了与有毒假菱形藻物种有关的可能的新的气候联系。项目1将进一步研究影响这些赤潮的生理和气候变量，这可能是不同生境和不同环境制度下种群适应的基础。项目2将把这些关于水华调控的新的和基本的见解纳入气候-人口耦合模型，以预测未来气候情景下的赤潮威胁，这是能够量化这种反复出现的公共卫生威胁的未来风险的关键一步。在斑马鱼模型的生物医学研究中，项目3发现发育中的大脑中的髓鞘形成是软骨藻酸的靶标。该项目将使用转基因斑马鱼和单细胞RNA测序来确定软骨藻酸、岩藻毒素和蓝毒素Anatoxin-a在体内对斑马鱼胚胎的影响的特定细胞机制，并将使用体外人iPSC衍生的3D脑系统来阐明毒素对人类细胞神经和神经胶质细胞分化的影响。不同的HAB毒素联合暴露的影响将在早期生命阶段和成年人中进行检查。通过这种多学科协作和综合的方法，所有三个项目都将把海洋过程与人类暴露联系起来，帮助定义易受影响的人类亚群的暴露，并预测气候变化的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health is a five-year effort aimed at addressing how changing climate could influence harmful algal bloom (HAB) dynamics and human exposure to HAB toxins, a serious and global human health threat. The overall objective is to protect public health through enhanced understanding of how climate and oceanic processes affect the intensity and distribution of toxin-producing HABs and to understand the potential health risks from exposure even to low levels of their potent neurotoxins, especially during susceptible stages of life. Three distinct research projects will explore environmental controls of bloom occurrence, create numerical models to predict the exposure of human population to toxins under changing climate conditions, and study the effects of HAB toxins on the brain. The administrative core of the Center will connect these projects, encouraging open discussion of planning, integration, communication and enhancing diverse perspectives, and providing rigorous evaluation of progress in all aspects of the program. The Center’s Community Engagement Core will facilitate integration of the research with education and engagement of resource managers and other stakeholders. The Center will improve awareness of emerging HAB issues for the public health community and develop new educational materials and interactive activities for K-12 classrooms, and for health care providers. The Center is jointly supported by NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences and by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).The Center will focus on two key HAB taxa: Alexandrium catenella, which produces the saxitoxins responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), and Pseudo-nitzschia spp., which produce domoic acid responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP) syndrome; both are expanding geographically. Novel, targeted, efficient, and data-rich sampling approaches developed by the applicants and applied in situ in natural settings have revealed new controls of A. catenella population dynamics, and have identified possible new climate links regarding toxic Pseudo-nitzschia species. Project 1 will examine further the physiological and climatic variables affecting these HABs, which may underlie population adaptation in different habitats and different environmental regimes. Project 2 will incorporate these new and fundamental insights on bloom regulation into coupled climate-population models to predict HAB threats under future climate scenarios, a key step toward being able to quantify future risks from this recurrent public health threat. In biomedical studies with the zebrafish model, Project 3 has identified myelination in the developing brain as a target of domoic acid. This project will use transgenic zebrafish and single-cell RNA-sequencing to identify the cell-specific mechanisms underlying effects of domoic acid, saxitoxin, and the cyanotoxin anatoxin-a in zebrafish embryos in vivo and will use human iPSC-derived 3D brain systems in vitro to elucidate toxin effects on neural and glial cell differentiation in human cells. Effects of different HAB toxin co-exposures will be examined in early life stages and adults. Through this multidisciplinary collaborative and integrated approach, all three projects will link oceanic processes to human exposure, helping to define the exposure of susceptible human subpopulations and predict the effects of a changing climate.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.