| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 生命科學系所 === 102 === Heavy metal pollution has intrigued Taiwan for more than 50 years, the famous cases such as the Blackfoot Disease in 1956, Cadmium rice in 1982, Green oysters in 1986, and Mercury-Laced waste by Formosa Plastics in 1998. These events have caused lots of health issues and caused disrepute to the country. Taiwan is an island like Japan, both one know as sea farming countries. Therefore, it’s important to take care of our country’s aquatic food safety. In recent years, aquatic food contaminated with mercury is one of the most debated topics among people. In our lab, we had isolated a bacterium, Bacillus megaterium strain MB1 from mercury contaminated sludge in Minamata city, Japan, which had board spectrum of organic mercury resistance. MerB3 protein from MB1 has been characterized for its ability to lyse organic mercury into less toxic inorganic mercury. For this purpose, we proposed an idea to establish the mercury resistance line in Zebrafish by expressing bacterial organomercurial lyase MerB3. The aim was to observe, if the transgenic fish line could stop the organomercurial bioaccumulation in the food chain.
Results showed that the transgenic zebrafish had higher survival rate than wild type Zebrafish in organomercurial contaminated water, and slightly lower lipid peroxide effect than wild type zebrafish from organomercurial stress. But, the in-vitro protein activity test of MerB3 from transgenic zebrafish was unable to lyse organic mercury completely. Thus, we would investigate the in-vitro experiment to knowing why MerB3 protein cannot perform well in the future.
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