Thermal stress on Egyptian sea cucumber Holothuria atra: a multiple biomarker approach
Elevations in sea water temperature in the Red Sea are continuing as a consequence of climate change. This leads to the importance of investigating the impact of such thermal perturbations on the biological system and how organisms in the Red Sea, which already live in a warm environment, would be influenced. Specifically, the focus in this project is on holothurian organisms (sea cucumbers). It is of great importance to investigate the vulnerability of holothurians under the extra warming trends in Red Sea under future expectations. That would enable to evaluate the impact of such global warming on those ecologically important deposit feeding organisms.
This project aims in a first step at exploring the response of the Egyptian sea cucumber Holothuria atra to thermal stress on the cellular level such as their oxidative and antioxidant responses. In a second step, their molecular responses through investigating the gene expression levels of different molecular biomarker under different temperature regimes will be investigated.
