Analysis of pollutant-induced proteinexpression

For the assessment of the state of the coastal system so called indicator organisms are a group of parameters which are observed regularly. Marine mammals as top predators in the marine food web are considered as bioindicators of effects of environmental contamination in the marine ecosystem.
Our main focus is currently on the development of bioanalytical methods for the detection of biological effects of contaminants, which could be measured in blood and tissue samples of harbour seals in the Wadden Sea. We isolate primary cells and perform exposure experiments on cellular level to enable species-specific investigations of wild marine mammals. This work is done in close cooperation with the Research and Technology Centre Westcoast (FTZ) of the University Kiel in Büsum (PD Dr. Ursula Siebert and coworkers). We analyse the pollutant-induced modifications in the protein expression pattern with proteomics methods.
The hereby identified pattern of biomarker proteins for the early diagnosis of contaminant-induced disorders should be used in additional methods for the use of harbour seals as indicator organisms in coastal monitoring.