Group Award for Leveraging Activities - 2001 FDA Science Forum

Board T02

Seafood Toxins: Characterizing the Source and Nature of Toxins Accumulated by Shellfish
P.P. Eilers¹, S.M. Conrad¹, S. Hall¹, G. Langlois², J. Matweyou³, G. Plumley^{3 1}CFSAN, FDA, Washington DC 20204, ²CA Dept. Health Services, Berkeley CA 94704, ³Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks AK 99701

Natural toxins from plankton can cause serious human illness when accumulated by shellfish. As part of our mandate to assure seafood safety we need to characterize these toxins and the organisms that produce them. This poster describes some of our recent work in this area including studies of toxin composition in Alexandrium spp. and production of domoic acid by different populations of Pseudo-nitzschia.