Article - Sea urchins and humans share genes - from - SFU - Bruce Brandhorst (Port Moody), 604.291.5366, brandhor@sfu.ca Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 604.291.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca , November 16, 2006

Simon Fraser University molecular biologists have helped a worldwide team of scientists make a discovery that could advance doctors’ understanding of how genetic diseases occur and how to treat them. Bruce Brandhorst, Jack Chen and Karl Bergeron are among 200 researchers who have learned that many of the gene families in the sea urchin, a simple spiny marine animal, are the same as those in the human and other complex vertebrates. The journal Science has published the researchers’ findings in its November issue. The sea urchin has many genes linked to human diseases such as Huntington’s chorea, muscular dystrophy, Usher syndrome, neurological disorders and atherosclerosis. This genetic similarity, combined with the transparency of the sea urchin’s embryonic stage “will enable scientists to test hypotheses about the function of genes in human development,” says Brandhorst. “The sea urchin will also be a valuable biomedical model for understanding the evolution of sensory organs and elaborate but distinctive immune systems in animals.” Chen used his expertise in bioinformatics (computational mining of DNA data) to help scientists identify genes involved in detecting chemicals. Scientists at the Vancouver Genome Sciences centre at the British Columbia Cancer agency helped map the sea urchin’s DNA genome. Brandhorst, the chair of the molecular biology and biochemistry department at SFU, helped uncover genetic similarities between the sea urchin’s and the human sensory nervous systems. Sea urchins lack eyes, ears and noses. But these underwater hedgehog look-a-likes have many genes involved in vision, hearing and detection of chemicals, like their more highly evolved distant cousins, humans. Sea urchins use their tube feet, hose-like appendages with suction cups for movement, to sense their environment. - posted on puha.org: March 13, 2007

Article - Fish News Summary March 2, 2007 - from - D&D Pacific Fisheries ltd. , March 02, 2007

Last year the Canadian DFO got hit with a court ruling saying that they could not use sales of fish from chartered fishing vessels to pay for research. The court said the fish were in the public domain, and DFO was appropriating them for its own budget. Now the start of the BC snow crab fishing season, and possibly the sablefish season as well, is being jeopardized because the DFO cannot fund the test fisheries that have been used to determine opening dates. - posted on puha.org: March 12, 2007

Article - Our humble sea urchin caught in Russian plot - from - © The Vancouver Province 2007 , March 06, 2007

A top-level summit takes place in Vancouver today to discuss an international threat to British Columbia's sea-urchin industry, once worth almost $16 million a year at the wholesale level. But the market for our urchin -- mainly in Japan, where the creatures are eagerly devoured as a delicacy -- is in turmoil. And it's all due to Russian pirates scraping the ocean bottom around the Kurile Islands in a fishery that is both unregulated and illegal. Summit delegates will be told the rogue fishery operates in defiance of environmental sustainability. The plundered urchin are of a good quality, though, and are sold cheaply enough to undercut the legal competition. The message to Ottawa is this: Tell Moscow we won't stand for any more of their fishy trade tactics. - - - What do you think? Leave a brief comment, name and your town at: 604-605-2029, fax: 604-605-2099 or e-mail: provletters@png.canwest.com - posted on puha.org: March 12, 2007