bioSEMINAR with Jarl Giske and María Fernández Míguez

Welcome to bioSEMINAR!  The seminars run Thursdays in the auditorium at VilVite and are open to anyone interested.  Coffe, tea and light  og er åpent for alle interesserte.  Kaffe, te og noe enkelt å bite i blir servert.

Jarl Giske, Evolution of agency in vertebrates: 

High-speed mobility evolved in arthropod and vertebrate predators and prey during the Cambrian explosion some 540-500 million years ago. It may seem that these groups gradually but independently came in possession of architectures and model systems for fast and cost-efficient decision-making. The core of this machinery is competition between “survival circuits” that link sensing, cognition, emotion and behaviour. It seems that survival circuits in vertebrates already during the Cambrian explosion evolved to utilize subjective experience, social learning, simulation-based prediction and felt goals and purposes for better decisions-making, and that these four capacities later opened for the emergence of nonverbal rationality, consciousness and the experience of free will.

Jarl is a Professor affiliated with the Ecology and evolution subject group and the Theoretical ecology research group. 

María Fernández Míguez. The ToxiGen project: Reproductive toxicity and transgenerational effects of petroleum mixtures in fish

Crude oil is a complex mixture of compounds that can disrupt the endocrine function and reproduction. The ToxiGen project aims to improve environmental risk assessment by identifying the specific compounds driving toxicity. We combined omics, precision-cut liver slices, biomarkers, and in vitro assays targeting key biological pathways in fish. This integrated approach provides clearer mechanistic insight into toxicity while reducing reliance on animal testing.

María er post doctoral fellow affiliated with the Environmental Biology and Aquaculture subject group and the Environmental Toxicology research group.