1588 / 2024-10-10 20:49:33

The Ocean and Human Health Nexus: Linkages from Global Challenges to Abyssal Fish and Biomedical Insight

chemicals,ocean health,human health,pollutants,algal toxins,plastics,enzymes,pressure,deep sea,midwater

Keynote Session

The field of Oceans and Human Health is multi-faceted with a convergence of research disciplines, in both curiosity-driven research, and problem-oriented research, addressing worsening global issues. Global change includes chemical change, with harmful algal blooms (HABs), pollutant chemicals, plastics and their associated chemicals occurring globally. HAB toxins and pollutant chemicals threaten both ocean health and human health. Disease and mortality among marine animals have been explicitly linked to high levels of toxins, chemicals, and plastics. Studies in animal models indicate mechanisms and identify neurobehavioral effects of toxins and chemicals. But do globally distributed chemicals occur at levels that may have effects globally, including in remote regions? To answer that question, one must ask the animals that live there. Responses to pollutant chemicals in the ocean involve xenobiotic and nuclear receptors that sense chemicals and metabolism by or impacts on enzymes in the cytochrome P450 family.  Many chemicals of concern, pesticides, PCBs, plastics chemicals, and more, involve a common denominator in P450 enzymes that are at the center of a convergence of fields – endocrinology, pharmacology, development, reproduction, ecdysis, carcinogenesis, pollution effects, sterol biosynthesis, and more – with impacts on pathways leading to adverse health outcomes. Studies over years have shown molecular effects of chemicals involving P450 in freshwaters and coastal fishes. We asked whether effects involving xenobiotic receptors and P450s occur in remote, poorly known, and potentially fragile ecosystems, in studies of cosmopolitan fish species from the mesopelagic realm or “twilight zone”, and from abyssal depths. This involves environmental adaptation, both to chemicals, and to pressure. Our studies have shown gene expression ostensibly linked to pollutant chemicals in both regions. Studies of potential effects of plastic-derived chemicals on a P450 enzyme involved in sterol biosynthesis in the abbysal fish Coryphaenoides armatus unexpectedly uncovered novel structural features in the human and shallow fish orthologs of this essential enzyme. Crystal structure of the rattail protein further revealed a unique feature that may enable proper function of this membrane-embedded enzyme in the lipid environment of the deep sea membranes. In summary, this talk will highlight ocean and human health connections, from global issues to new and fundamental molecular and cellular biomedical findings, including features found in studies of plastic pollution. (Supported in part by the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health with grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation [OCE-2418297] and the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences [2P01ES028938-06].)