Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health

伍兹霍尔海洋与人类健康中心的使命是通过加强了解海洋和环境进程，包括气候变化如何影响产毒生物的种群动态，以及接触其强效神经毒素的风险，来保护公众健康。尽管有害藻华对人类健康造成巨大影响，但影响有害藻华的分布、存活、增殖和毒性的因素仍然知之甚少。三个研究项目和两个核心组成的中心。该中心的结构将促进项目之间的整合，以及研究与教育和社区参与活动的整合。该中心将吸引利益相关者参与，促进在许多学术层面上进行有害藻华科学教育，并加强公众对有害藻华及其影响的了解。该中心由美国国家科学基金会和美国国家环境卫生科学研究所共同支持，研究活动将集中在两个关键的赤潮分类群：产生导致麻痹性贝类中毒的石房蛤毒素的芬地亚历山大藻和伪菱形藻。产生软骨藻酸，导致失忆性贝类中毒（ASP）综合症。由申请人开发并原位应用的新颖的、有针对性的、有效的和数据丰富的采样方法揭示了A. fundyense在自然环境中的动态与从实验室研究中推断的动态有很大不同，表明对气候的可塑性。拟议的研究将建立在这些新的和基本的见解是什么调节水华，并在该中心的海洋观测技术和建模的既定优势，预测环境变量如何可能影响人口动态的已知和新出现的赤潮威胁。后报模拟与缅因州海湾的气候数据记录相比较，将评估模式的性能和不确定性。对一系列潜在气候情景的预测可以帮助量化未来的公共卫生风险。同样，在发育中的大脑中也发现了特定的细胞，这些细胞是HAB毒素的目标，这些发现使人们对发育毒理学机制有了深入的了解。这些将指导研究，以解决毒素对发育中的中枢神经系统的影响范围，可能将发育暴露与成人后果联系起来。毒素作用新机制的研究将包括确定联合或重复暴露于亚致死水平的石房蛤毒素和软骨藻酸的影响，以及可能的沉默神经毒性，在斑马鱼模型的不同生命阶段。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The mission of the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health is to protect the public health through enhanced understanding of how oceanic and environmental processes including climatic variation affect the population dynamics of toxin producing organisms, and the risks from exposure to their potent neurotoxins. Factors affecting the distribution, survival, proliferation, and toxicity of harmful algal bloom (HAB) species still are poorly known, despite their enormous consequences for human health. Three research projects and two cores comprise the Center. The Center structure will facilitate the integration among projects, and the integration of research with education and community engagement activities. The Center will engage stakeholders, facilitate education on HAB science at many academic levels, and strengthen public knowledge about HAB blooms and their impacts. The Center is jointly supported by NSF and by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).The research activities of the Center will focus on two key HAB taxa: Alexandrium fundyense that produces the saxitoxins responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), and Pseudo-nitzschia spp. that produce domoic acid responsible for the amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP) syndrome. Novel, targeted, efficient, and data-rich sampling approaches developed by the applicants and applied in situ have revealed that critical aspects of A. fundyense dynamics in natural settings differ dramatically from those inferred from laboratory studies, indicating plasticity in response to climate. The research proposed will build on these new and fundamental insights into what regulates blooms, and on the Center's established strengths in ocean observation technologies and modeling, to predict how environmental variables may influence population dynamics of known and emerging HAB threats. Hindcast simulations compared with climate data records in the Gulf of Maine will assess model performance and uncertainty. Forecasts run for a range of potential climate scenarios can help quantify future public health risks. Similarly, specific cells have been identified in the developing brain that are targets of HAB toxins, findings giving insights into developmental toxicological mechanisms. These will guide studies to address the scope of toxin effect in the developing central nervous system, potentially linking developmental exposures to adult consequences. Studies of new mechanisms of toxin action will include determination of the effects of combined or repeated exposure to sub-lethal levels of saxitoxin and domoic acid, and possible silent neurotoxicity, at different life stages in the zebrafish model.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.