Wednesday19Apr 2017
Science Forum: "What Proteins Can Tell Us About Climate Change" with Lars Tomanek, Ph.D.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. PST
"What Proteins Can Tell Us About Climate Change" with Lars Tomanek, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biology at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Proteins play an important role in an organism’s response to environmental change and shifts in their abundances can tell us a lot about the underlying cellular processes involved in the determining the tolerance to a stressor. Marine organisms experience several environmental stressors, such as temperature, hypoxia, changes in salinity and pH, simultaneously.
Using mussels and crabs to study the cellular stress response, we discovered the ubiquitous importance of oxidative stress and several biochemical pathways to reduce the production of reactive oxygen species as a common response to all stressors, but also identified cellular processes, such as those involving ion regulation, as being specific to a single stressor, such as pH stress.
Comparisons between species with different stress tolerances provide insights into the possible “winners” and “losers” of climate change.
Proteins play an important role in an organism’s response to environmental change and shifts in their abundances can tell us a lot about the underlying cellular processes involved in the determining the tolerance to a stressor. Marine organisms experience several environmental stressors, such as temperature, hypoxia, changes in salinity and pH, simultaneously.
Using mussels and crabs to study the cellular stress response, we discovered the ubiquitous importance of oxidative stress and several biochemical pathways to reduce the production of reactive oxygen species as a common response to all stressors, but also identified cellular processes, such as those involving ion regulation, as being specific to a single stressor, such as pH stress.
Comparisons between species with different stress tolerances provide insights into the possible “winners” and “losers” of climate change.
Science Forum lectures are always free and open to all. Join us!
You can contact the event organizer, at regreen@chapman.edu.
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