Systems Biology of Marine Ecosystems

This book describes the latest advances in systems biology in four plant-based marine ecosystems: seaweeds, seagrasses, microalgae, and corals. Marine organisms that inhabit the oceanic environment experience a diverse range of environmental fluctuations, anthropogenic stress, and threats from invasive species and pathogens. System biology integrates physiology, genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics into numerical models and is emerging as an important approach to elucidate the functional adaptations of marine organisms to adverse environmental conditions. This book focuses on how ecophysiology, omics platforms, their integration (a systems biology perspective), and next generation sequencing tools are being used to address the stress response of marine seaweeds, seagrasses, corals, marine microbe diversity, and micro-and macroalgae/corals-bacterial interactions to global climate change and anthropogenic activities. The contents of the book are of special interest to graduate and postgraduate marine biology students and marine biology researchers, particularly those interested in marine ecology, stress physiology of marine macrophytes/corals/phytoplankton, and environmental microbiology. This book would also be of interest to marine engineers engaged in the management and conservation of our valuable marine resources.

Dr. Manoj Kumar is a research scientist (ARC-DECRA Fellow) in the Climate Change Cluster (C3), University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. He obtained a PhD in Marine Biotechnology at the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSMCRI-CSIR), Gujarat, India. His major research activities have been focused on the eco-physiology and stress tolerance mechanisms of benthic marine macrophytes (seaweeds and seagrasses) to diverse environmental and anthropogenic perturbations under the scenario of global climate change through omics approaches (proteomics and metabolomics). His research interests have also included: the use of seaweeds in food and fuel; quality seed stock generation of seaweeds using tissue culture; and protoplast isolation techniques. He has also researched the epigenetic regulation of marine and terrestrial plants under environmental stress conditions. Dr. Kumar was a visiting scientist at the Agriculture Research Organization (ARO), Volcani Centre, Israel where he expanded his research activities in the area of phyto-hormone signaling that regulates root and shoot architecture in the Arabidopsis model plant. Currently, he is studying the early signals of seagrass loss using advanced ‘omics’ approaches, in order to understand eutrophication and light attenuation related phenotypic responses in seagrasses.

Prof. Peter Ralph is the Executive Director of the Climate Change Cluster (C3) at the University of Technology Sydney. He leads a dynamic, multidisciplinary group of researchers dedicated to improving our predictions about the impacts of climate change. Over the past eight years, he has grown this research institute to support over 100 staff and students. He is a member of the Blue Carbon International Scientific Working Group, formed under the auspices of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, United Nations Environmental Program and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. He is the former leader of the CSIRO Marine and Coastal Carbon Biogeochemistry Cluster, which brought together the expertise of eight Australian universities in Australia's largest coastal blue carbon accounting, mapping and measurement study. He has recently been appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board for CzechGlobe (Global Change Research Institute - Czech Academy of Science).