Molecular Physiology of Toxin Production and Growth Regulation in Harmful Algae

Abstract

Molecular physiology is a hybrid discipline whereby cellular metabolism and regulatory and functional interactions of metabolites within organisms are explored via technological tools and concepts of molecular biology.From this perspective, molecular physiology, and the corresponding field of meta- bolomics derived from genomics, is in a relative state of infancy as applied to marine protists (or eukaryotic microalgae).Yet recent access to genomic data- bases for a variety of lower eukaryotes,and targeted genome studies involving cDNA libraries offer enormous potential to unlock mysteries relating algal genomes to cellular and ecological function.