Mariana Artal is a PhD student at University of São Paulo (USP)

Project title: Developing ecotoxicity biomarkers in the marine amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis and testing toxicity of manufactured nanomaterials

Project funding: FAPESP and CNPq

Project supervisors: Gisela A. Umbuzeiro and Theodore B. Henry

To protect ecosystems from the adverse effects from pollutants it is important to use standardized tests with representative organisms from the environment that needs to be protected. Marine and estuarine ecosystems still need model organisms that are sensitive and easy to grow and handling in lab conditions.

The amphipod Parhyale hawaiensis arises as a promising model for ecotoxicological studies because it is abundant, representative from estuarine ecosystems in tropical areas and has literature on their biology and genetics.

The aim of my PhD work is to develop and standardize procedures for husbandry P. hawaiensis in laboratory conditions with endpoints of mortality and reproduction, and gene expression analysis of metallothioneins.