Toxic Oceans: How do anthropogenic pollutants impact vital marine microbes?

环境污染威胁着世界海洋的可持续性。然而，我们仍然不了解污染如何影响海洋食物链底部的初级生产者。该项目旨在首次说明常见的化学污染物（除草剂、塑料渗滤液和原油）如何影响海洋光合细菌的关键群体。由于这些微生物支撑着整个海洋食物网，了解它们的反应对于监测和减轻污染物对海洋生态系统的影响至关重要。目的是设计和验证基于基因表达谱的新型、快速的环境应激分析。这代表了基因监测技术在海洋保护中的开创性新应用。

Environmental pollution threatens the sustainability of the world's oceans. However, we still do not understand how pollution affects primary producers at the base of oceanic food chains. This project aims to provide the first account of how common chemical pollutants (herbicides, plastic leachates and crude oil) affect key groups of marine photosynthetic bacteria. As these microbes underpin entire marine food webs, understanding their responses is crucial to monitoring and mitigating the impact of pollutants on ocean ecosystems. The aim is to design and validate novel, rapid environmental stress assays, based on gene expression profiling. This represents a pioneering new application of gene monitoring techniques to ocean conservation.