Plant & Animal Genomes XVII Conference Plant & Animal Genomes XVII ConferenceJanuary 10-14, 2009
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Oysters are known to tolerate a wide range of chemical contamination, biomagnify some compounds to dangerous levels and harbor human pathogens. Further oysters play important roles in ecosystems, are of commercial value, and have a broad geographic range (Mexico to New England) and thus can serve as sentinel’s for ecosystem health along most of the east coast of the US. Studies of the oyster transcriptome using a locally developed microarray have found responses to land use and chemical contaminants. These studies have found that genes involved in metabolic processes and energy production are robust indicators of land use and this observation is consistent with observations that land use influences growth rates of oysters. We have also identified a number of genes that respond to specific contaminants (eg. metallothioneins to Hg, heat shock proteins to DDT) at contaminant levels well below EPA guidelines for exposure. Further the response of particular genes is usually non-linear and contaminants interact synergistically. In this presentation we will explore the transcriptomic responses of oysters to a variety of human induced stresses using machine learning and pattern recognition tools. We will discover that there is no one right answer to the responses of transcript profiles to environments, but rather a series of answers as deep as the transcriptome itself.