Uncovering the Secrets of the Red Tide

Chemists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have recently discovered how tiny marine organisms produce the red tide toxins that have been the bane of seaside communities throughout the United States as well as the rest of the world.

MIT Associate Professor Timothy Jamison and graduate student Ivan Vilotijevic's discovery was released in the August 31 of Science. According to the MIT news office, the MIT chemists have described the method for creating the lethal components of red tide. The MIT team believes that their method approximates the synthesis used by dinoflagellates, the algae that causes red tide. Chemists have been trying to replicate the synthesis used by algae but right now, the method used by chemists to make a few milligrams of red tide toxin usually requires years of effort.

MIT reports that Red tides (algal blooms) can strike unpredictably and poison shellfish, making them dangerous for humans to eat. Scientists have been baffled at what causes dinoflagellates to produce the red tide toxins but their theory is that it may be a defense mechanism, provoked by changes in the tides, temperature shifts or other environmental stresses.

Red tide has plagued the fishing and shellfish industry for years. According to MIT news, in New England alone, the shellfish industry lost millions of dollars in 2005 during a red tide outbreak and also killed 30 endangered manatess in Florida just this spring. MIT researchers believe that understanding why red tide occurs and how it happens could help scientists prevent the aforementioned ecological and economic damage.

Jamison and Vilotijevic's theory is based on the "Nakanishi Hypothesis" of chemist, Koji Nakanishi of Columbia University. Nakanishi proposed a theory of a cascade of chemical steps that dinoflagellates could use to produce the red tide toxins, he was unable to demonstrate his theory and many believed that the "Nakanishi Hypothesis" would never be proven.