Abstract:

Fish are known to sense toxic pollutants via sensory cells in the olfactory and respiratory organs and central chemoreceptive areas in the brain. After sensing the pollutants, the fish generate various breathing patterns because the breathing responses are beneficial to prevent the pollutants uptake, and it helps to increase survival rates. Also, the breathing patterns are species-specific and chemical-specific. Therefore, the breathing patterns can be utilized as bioindicators to monitor potential pollutants in natural water systems and urban water infrastructures such as drinking water plants and wastewater treatment plants. At the Department of Ocean Science (OCES) in HKUST, the principal objectives of my research are to screen the breathing responses of aquatic organisms, including vertebrates and invertebrates that are socioeconomically valuable and environmentally significant, and apply these organisms as bioindicators for monitoring potential pollutants in natural and urban water systems in China.

Biography:

Dr. Junho Eom started his undergrad education with bioprocess engineering at Kangwon National University in South Korea. After graduating, he stayed at the same university but broadened his interests from engineering to animal sciences and received an M.Sc. in herpetology with Dr. Daesik Park. He then moved to Canada. During his second M.Sc. at the University of British Columbia (UBC), under the supervision of Dr. Colin Brauner, he focused on pheromones, chemosensory systems, animal behaviour, and respiratory physiology in various species of fish and crustaceans. His doctoral research was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Chris Wood at UBC and focused on ammonia as a respiratory gas in fish, with particular emphasis on its role in ventilatory control, both centrally and peripherally, and the mechanisms involved, using the rainbow trout and Pacific hagfish as model systems. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Wood lab, Dr. Eom is engaged in several projects. Two of these directly follow up his doctoral work, looking at the role(s) of ammonia and the other respiratory gases in the bloodstream in controlling the changes in ventilation that occur after feeding and after exhaustive exercise. A third project looks at how feeding and breathing are integrated into the Pacific hagfish. He is also interested in modelling the pressure-flow relationships during breathing in fish and using continuous ventilatory recording in fish as a sensitive detector system for aquatic pollutants.

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