9309283 Overstreet This is a three-year cooperative research project proposed by Drs. Robin Overstreet and William Hawkins, Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, and Professor Peter Lin Sun, Taiwan National Pingtung Institute of Agriculture. This proposal requests funds for travel and graduate student support to carry out cooperative research to determine if there are identifiable biomarkers in tilapia for indication different levels of pollution. If successful and reliable biomarkers in fish for pollution monitoring are found, they can be a quick indication of the condition of aquatic environments. The study plans to test a new technique by adapting parasitological methods to the field of biomonitoring. Taiwan is important for this research since there are relatively abundant accessible warmwater fish (tilapia) living in the different levels of polluted environments. Dr. Peter Sun has noted that the tilapia in the grossly affected area are showing pathological alterations. The project can contribute significantly in human resource development by inclusion of graduate student work in systems which are very different from those in the U.S. This project is jointly supported by the NSF and the Taiwan National Science Council (NSC).
