Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health
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You are here: WHCOHH Frontpage > Pilot Projects: 2005 Projects

2005 Funded Pilot Projects

Transcriptome profiling in the harmful alga Aureococcus anophagefferens

PI(s): Sonya Dyhrman
Institution(s): WHOI

Aureococcus anophagefferens is a widespread HAB species that has had severe and negative impacts. A. anophagefferens is allelopathic and is thought to produce a suite of natural products including a water soluble neuroactive metabolite, or toxin, that has been implicated in dose-dependent mortality and health decline in model shellfish. The goal of this COHH pilot project is to sequence three Long- SAGE (serial analysis of gene expression) libraries for this organism to examine the A. anophagefferens transcriptome and how it changes with external stressors. The researchers will sequence roughly 30-40,000 tags per library to build a comprehensive view of the transcriptome.

Beach Pathogens

PI(s): Steve Elgar, Britt Raubenheimer, & Rebecca Gast
Institution(s): WHOI

Pathogens in coastal sediments pose a serious health risk to users of America’s beaches, but the effects of waves, currents, and changes in beach sediment on pathogen distribution are not understood. We hypothesize that sediments contaminated by pathogens (eg, from sewage) can be exposed when wind, waves, and currents cause changes in the beach configuration (eg, erosion or accretion), potentially creating additional human health hazards, via both direct contact with contaminated sand and exposure to pathogens carried by spray from breaking waves in the surf. To examine how physical forces may impact sewage-associated microbes on beaches, we will investigate the effects of waves, currents, and changes in beach sediment on the quantity and distribution of Legionella spp. Legionella species will be surveyed using PCR amplification before and after an early-fallseason large-wave event (when significant sediment erosion is likely). Legionella in samples of sand from the beach and the surfzone will be correlated with wave conditions and changes in sediment levels (eg, erosion and accretion).

Names-based cyberinformatics tools for rapid response communications and outreach during event management – a pilot based on harmful algal blooms in NE US coastal waters

PI(s): Patterson, David J. (MBL) and Anderson, Don (WHOI)
Institution(s): MBL

Algal blooms are increasing in frequency, extent and significance. The objective of this project is to promote human health by applying new informatics technologies for biology to improve communication among the public and stakeholders in response to a bloom event. The primary deliverable will be a pilot template for a web site that can rapidly call upon expert sources of information, inherit previously known but relevant information, can add local content and will combine the information dynamically in a very flexible environment. At the core of this project lie original internet services that use the names of organisms to discover and manage biological information. Taxonomic indexing is a biologically informed suite of services that uses taxonomic knowledge and awareness of nomenclatural conventions to bring together information that has been cataloged under different names. Around such services we are assembling modular software that allow us to combine distributed and local knowledge in flexible, interoperable, and scaleable web environments called STAR*sites. The pilot site will exploit the 2005 NE US Alexandrium bloom to demonstrate the feasibility of rapidly combining expert information from multiple sources with locally generated data.