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Abstract: Within the three-year European Research Project BEEP (Biological Effects of Environmental Pollution in marine ecosystems), a workshop was carried out at the facility of Akvamiljø a.s. with the scientific support of IRIS (International Research Institute of Stavanger) researchers. Validation of newly developed biomarkers, especially at the molecular level, was the core part of the activity. Two large scale mesocosm exposures were done and samples shared between the participants (about 30 Institute), allowing an integrated approach for studying the effects of several pollutants selected as environmentally important issues (i.e. PAHs, alkyl phenols, bisphenol A, diallyl phthalate and polybrominated diphenyl ether). In addition, a field study (Visne, Norway) has been performed for the validations of biomarkers under environmental conditions. The Stavanger workshop demonstrates the importance of collaboration between researchers to establish common ways to proceed in biomarker analysis. The common exposures encourage a joint strategy for planning biomonitoring activity. A clarification in this direction is needed to coordinate results from numerous studies about the environmental impact of pollutants which are currently carried out all over Europe and around the world. Expertise in various disciplines is required to plan and perform a successful monitoring activity and to study/predict the effect of environmental pollutants. Biologists, chemists, statisticians and environmental researchers should always be included. The Stavanger workshop also indicated the importance of developing multivariate statistical methods to enable interpretation of complex data sets. It is of interest to develop statistical tools which can integrate the results from a battery of biomarkers in order to obtain a more complete picture of environmental impact. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Ciphergen ProteinChip Technology™ is a proteomic tool, used for the discovery of new and sensitive biomarkers. This approach was used to evaluate the protein profile of crabs exposed to various pollutants. Two different exposure experiments were performed: spider crabs (Hyas araneus) were exposed for 3 weeks to diallyl phatalate (DAP), bisphenol A (BisA) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE-47), while shore crabs (Carcinus maeanas) were exposed to crude oil, crude oil spiked with alkylphenols (APs) and 4-nonylphenol (NP). Gender and species-related protein pattern alterations were observed and compared to controls. Results showed different responses to pollutants by the two species. Major disruption in protein peak expression was observed in samples exposed to mixtures of pollutants, i.e. oil spiked with APs. Compared to shore crab, spider crab species showed a lower degree of response in terms of number of altered protein peaks following exposure. In general, female individuals of both species showed a larger number of significantly altered proteins compared to males. Data analysis by non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) was performed. Bi-dimesional-MDS plots revealed a good separation of groups for both spider and shore crabs. In some cases, a good discrimination can also be observed between the two genders within each treatment. Results highlight the potential of crabs as sentinel organisms for the aquatic environment. The results indicate that SELDI-ToF technology is a powerful tool to discover protein expression signatures for different pollutants and sex dependent responses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]