Grant: Idea to Innovation

The BC coastline is under increasing pressure from competing coastal zone utilization (e.g. urbanization, recreation and aquaculture) and potential climate change impacts, highlighting the need for effective diagnostic tools of coastal ecosystem health and function. Filter feeding shellfish provide essential ecosystem services and are an important component of the coastal ecosystem. One of the major problems in assessing shellfish health is how to determine the organism's response to multiple stressing agents in the natural environment, as well as to anthropogenic effects such as xenobiotic pollution and aquaculture husbandry methods. The product described here is a multi-species oligoarray specifically designed for utilization in the assessment of stress responses in marine mussels. This microarray tool allows the determination of stress responses in two species of marine mussels to multiple stressing agents, and data is obtained through the changes in gene expression profiles over thousands of genes, visualized through laser emissions of the scanned microarray. The developed microarray has a number of positive traits (global markets, product quality, broad application) that places this array in a position of significant advantage compared to competitors. Potential uses of this technology include in wastewater management, aquaculture management, environmental monitoring, and in other industrial and research areas.