Individual animals differ from each other on a number of biological levels. At the most basic level, the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of each animal is different, and transcription of the DNA code yields variations at the protein level, which in turn give rise to individual diversity at the physical level. In recent years, accessing the primary genetic code of individual animals has become strai...

Ocean acidification and warming are considered two of the greatest threats to marine biodiversity, yet the combined effect of these stressors on marine organisms remains largely unclear. Using a meta-analytical approach, we assessed the biological responses of marine organisms to the effects of ocean acidification and warming in isolation and combination. As expected biological responses varied...

The importance of biological monitoring, to detect exposure to toxicants and to aid in making decisions about prevention and human health risks, is widely recognized. Thus, in the past few years the study of biomarkers has been the focus of considerable interest in the fields of toxicology, epidemiology, occupational and environmental health (1-5). The development of neurotoxicity is a multiste...

The challenges for establishing an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have created a need for biomarkers that reflect the core pathology of the disease. The cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of total Tau (T-tau), phosphorylated Tau (P-Tau) and beta-amyloid peptide (Ab42) reflect, respectively, neurofibrillary tangle and amyloid pathologies and are considered as surrogate markers of AD p...

Empirical investigations of the impacts of anthropogenic stressors on marine organisms are typically performed under controlled laboratory conditions, onshore mesocosms, or via offshore experiments with realistic (but uncontrolled) environmental variation. These approaches have merits, but onshore setups are generally small sized and fail to recreate natural stressor fields, whereas offshore st...

We have been working on functional genomics using C. elegans as a model organism. We first used cell-type specific markers and preexisting mutants to investigate how genotype-phenotype causal relationships are regulated. With the aid of transgenic methods, we analyzed various biological processes in C. elegans. We have developed efficient methods to isolate gene knockout strains. Thousands of s...

Living organisms act as integrated wholes to maintain themselves. Individual actions can each be explained by characterizing the mechanisms that perform activity. But these alone do not explain how various activities are coordinated and performed versatilely. We argue this depends on a specific type of mechanism, control mechanism. develop an account examining several extensively studied operat...