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UTILITY OF GENETIC INDICATORS FOR MONITORING ECOLOGICAL CONDITION
Citation:
Sandhu, S. UTILITY OF GENETIC INDICATORS FOR MONITORING ECOLOGICAL CONDITION. Presented at 8th International Conference on Environmental Mutagens, Shizuoka, Japan, Oct. 21-26, 2001.
Description:
It is evident that Earth's ecosystems have been steadily deteriorating due to relatively recent human activities. Since quality of life depends upon the ecosystem services, the impacts of deterioration of ecosystems on human health and on wild life populations has been amply demonstrated. The concern to human health from exposure to environmental mutagens has been mainly limited to the etiology of disease (e.g., cancer). However, the concern from exposure of natural population to environmental stressors including environmental mutagens should be viewed from the perspective of (a) disease etiology (b) reproductive success and (3) genetic diversity. Cytogenetic endpoints and cellular biomarkers have been used for last three decades for evaluating the potential effects of pollutants on the genetic health of marine organisms. Rapid developments in molecular sciences have brought about the development of a variety of genetic indicators for measuring gene alterations and their effects on individuals, populations and communities. Recently a suite of molecular techniques, i.e., microsatelite analysis, RAPD, RFLP in mtDNA, single gene sequence (in nucleus and mtDNA) has been applied to survey genetic diversity in natural populations of brown bullheads, steller sea lions, mosquito fish and barn swallows. Evaluations of data from these studies indicate that genetic indicators can provide early warning on the perturbations in the population genetic structure and the feasibility of their use for biomonitoring environmental condition should be given a serious consideration. This presentation will review the issues related to potential genetic effects of pollution and discuss technical approaches to address these issues.