Marine Medicine: Research aims

Molecular and genetic research on marine model organisms, such as diatoms and crustaceans, aims to allow inferences to be made, and to provide possible starting points for combating human inflammatory diseases. This is possible as the genes that are central to barrier functions in marine organisms are present in substantially greater diversity than in humans. For example, sea urchins have more than 200 so-called toll-like receptors, humans only have nine, and more than 1000 NOP proteins (approx. 100 in humans). These proteins are components of the innate immune system in humans and protect them from pathogens in the environment. In the course of their evolution, proteins for immune defence in humans have undergone selection and thus humans have fewer of them in comparison to sea urchins. At the same time, the remaining genetic variants in these human barrier genes result increasingly in diseases under extant conditions. Why this is the case and what the "natural" function of these variants is, are the challenges posed to marine medicine.

The junior research group "Marine Medicine" is associated with the Centre for Molecular Biosciences (ZMB) at Kiel University. This is where the research group will make comparisons between the genes of functioning barriers in marine organisms and those encoding such barriers in humans. Only in depth knowledge on the origins and function of these disease causing genes will permit improvements in diagnostic measures and the development of new forms of therapy. The evolution of the relevant gene families will be reconstructed with the aid of gene data bases for marine organisms (from multicellular organisms such as cnidarians to unicellular plankton).