NSF Award
2418297
The Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health is a five-year effort aimed at addressing how changing climate could influence harmful algal bloom (HAB) dynamics and human exposure to HAB toxins, a serious and global human health threat. The overall objective is to protect public health through enhanced understanding of how climate and oceanic processes affect the intensity and distribution of toxin-producing HABs and to understand the potential health risks from exposure even to low levels of their potent neurotoxins, especially during susceptible stages of life. Three distinct research projects will explore environmental controls of bloom occurrence, create numerical models to predict the exposure of human population to toxins under changing climate conditions, and study the effects of HAB toxins on the brain. The administrative core of the Center will connect these projects, encouraging open discussion of planning, integration, communication and enhancing diverse perspectives, and providing rigorous evaluation of progress in all aspects of the program. The Center’s Community Engagement Core will facilitate integration of the research with education and engagement of resource managers and other stakeholders. The Center will improve awareness of emerging HAB issues for the public health community and develop new educational materials and interactive activities for K-12 classrooms, and for health care providers. The Center is jointly supported by NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences and by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).<br/><br/>The Center will focus on two key HAB taxa: Alexandrium catenella, which produces the saxitoxins responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), and Pseudo-nitzschia spp., which produce domoic acid responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP) syndrome; both are expanding geographically. Novel, targeted, efficient, and data-rich sampling approaches developed by the applicants and applied in situ in natural settings have revealed new controls of A. catenella population dynamics, and have identified possible new climate links regarding toxic Pseudo-nitzschia species. Project 1 will examine further the physiological and climatic variables affecting these HABs, which may underlie population adaptation in different habitats and different environmental regimes. Project 2 will incorporate these new and fundamental insights on bloom regulation into coupled climate-population models to predict HAB threats under future climate scenarios, a key step toward being able to quantify future risks from this recurrent public health threat. In biomedical studies with the zebrafish model, Project 3 has identified myelination in the developing brain as a target of domoic acid. This project will use transgenic zebrafish and single-cell RNA-sequencing to identify the cell-specific mechanisms underlying effects of domoic acid, saxitoxin, and the cyanotoxin anatoxin-a in zebrafish embryos in vivo and will use human iPSC-derived 3D brain systems in vitro to elucidate toxin effects on neural and glial cell differentiation in human cells. Effects of different HAB toxin co-exposures will be examined in early life stages and adults. Through this multidisciplinary collaborative and integrated approach, all three projects will link oceanic processes to human exposure, helping to define the exposure of susceptible human subpopulations and predict the effects of a changing climate.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
