Kompendium der fuer Freisetzungen relevanten aquatischen Organismen

An introduction describes the aims of genetic modifications, developmental stages of fish, a list of relevant genes, transgenic methods, as well as important aspects of integration and expression. In a second part a list of institutes and working groups as well as their research focus on transgenic aquatic organisms are presented supplemented by tables showing present gene constructs and their application in aquatic organisms. The study mainly focus on the ecological impact on the release of transgenic aquatic organisms. In particular, general risks of the release of transgenic organisms are described comparing the effects of the risks by the release of allochtonous species. The biology of relevant aquatic organisms are presented in detail with respect to the ecological impact of a release. The topical state of risk assessment as well as appropriate criteria and methods of risk assessment are discussed. It has been shown, that there is a distinct gap in the knowledge about the ecological impact of a release of transgenic aquatic organisms. Furthermore, ecological impact studies are by far underrepresented opposite to genetic approaches. In theory, the span of ecological impacts stretch as far as the span of interactions between organism and environment. Therefore, a careful risk assessment has to be performed by an integrated consideration of economic and ecological aspects as well as a balanced application of the precautionary principle. (orig.)SIGLEAvailable from TIB Hannover: RN 8422(1998,33) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekBundesministerium fuer Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit, Bonn (Germany)DEGerman