Current Research

• Latitudinal temperature gradients and the evolutionary adaptation of heavy chain myosin genes in gammarid amphipods.

  Funded by NERC and in collaboration with Prof A. J. El Haj, School of Postgraduate Medicine, Keele; Prof G. Goldspink, Dept. of Anatomy & Developmental Biology, Royal Free & University College of Medicine, London; Dr D. H. Lunt, Molecular Ecology and Fisheries Genetics Lab., Dept Biological Sciences, Hull.

  More information

• Environmental control of growth and metabolism in crab eggs
  
  
  
  Ph.D. S. J. McCleary.
  The current project uses respirometry and in vitro labelling studies to characterise the role of molecular oxygen in the regulation of growth and metabolism in developing eggs from the edible crab, Cancer pagurus. Protein expression patterns are being examined in eggs at different stages of development in response to varying periods of hypoxia.
  
  
• Latitudinal variation in the metabolic costs of surviving heat stress
  Ph.D. S. P. S. Rastrick.
  An investigation into the effects of latitude on the metabolic costs associated with thermal stress in a phylogenetically defined group of marine gammarid amphipods distributed along a natural thermal cline. Specifically, Sam will be examining the effects of latitude on:
  1. the heat shock response at both the molecular and protein level;
  2. whole-animal rates of metabolism and protein synthesis;
  3. metabolic costs of protein synthesis, and more specifically, the heat shock response;
  4. thermal tolerances.

• Characterisation of stress responses in polar fishes.
  Ongoing collaboration with Dr S. Egginton (Dept. of Physiology, University of Birmingham); Dr J. Christiansen (Norwegian College of Fishery Science, Tromso); Dr M. Clarke (British Antarctic Survey, BAS); Dr K. Fraser (BAS); and Prof. T. Moon (Dept of Biology, University of Ottawa, Canada). An examination of primary stress responses and their associated mechanisms in cold adapted fish species, including the molecular characterization of beta-adrenoreceptors.

Recently completed Ph.D. project

• Seasonal responses to thermal stress in intertidal isopods
  Ph.D. awarded to Leigh Faulkner 2002.
  Season has a marked effect on rates of metabolism, and heat shock protein expression patterns, which were associated with differences in thermal tolerances. Even though whole body fractional rates of protein synthesis differed between the seasons, rates were unaffected by temperature. Such a response could ensure survival in a highly liable thermal environment, supporting the assumption that thermal tolerances of intertidal invertebrates are more closely related to protein than to energy metabolism. Physiol. Biochem. Zoology 78(2), 227-38.

Further Information

Latitudinal temperature gradients and the evolutionary adaptation of heavy chain myosin genes in gammarid amphipods.

This project aimed to determine the extent of genotypic adaptation to latitude in a specific locus, of known functional significance (hypervariable regions in the myosin heavy chain gene, MyHC), in an ecologically important group of crustaceans, the gammarid amphipods. Species belonging to this genus are abundant and widely distributed in marine coastal habitats of the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, with individual species extending from eurythermal temperate regions in the British Isles (50-60^ON) to cold stenothermal conditions in Northern Norway (70^ON) and Svalbard (80^ON).

Eight species of gammarid amphipods with different latitudinal distribution patterns, and different habitats, within the North East Atlantic/Arctic Ocean were included in the study. The project used a combination of molecular (RT-PCR, cloning, sequencing) and biochemical techniques (enzyme analysis, histochemistry), to evaluate the relative importance of sequence variation in MyHC genes to the phenotypic plasticity of muscle fibre types and the phylogenetic relationships between the various species.

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