lina.gunnarsson@fysiologi.gu.se

www.physiology.gu.se/endo/

A great number of pharmaceutically active compounds pass our sewage treatment and reach the aquatic environment. There is a high risk that these substances will interfere with the normal physiology of wildlife because pharmaceuticals are biologically extremely potent and also often stable substances. Of the water-living organisms, fish are particularly susceptible to residual drugs as their physiology resembles ours and substances can become bioconcentrated over the gills.

Biomarkers or biological responses that can reveal if organisms are exposed to and/or affected by certain pollutants are very useful in environmental research. With the exception of biomarkers for estrogens, there is a complete lack of validated, specific biomarkers to asses exposure of wildlife to pharmaceuticals.

This project is aiming to develop biomarkers in fish for exposure to slowly degradable and widely used pharmaceuticals. We will search for fingerprints by microarray analysis of hepatic mRNA expression pattern in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) exposed to selected pharmaceuticals. These fingerprint profiles will be compared with profiles of fish exposed to sewage effluents to validate the fingerprints in complex exposure situations. The microarray analyses are preformed with a newly developed 16k chip from the Canadian consortium GRASP (Genomic Research in Atlantic Salmon).

Joakim Larsson