The aims of this project is to study the effects of adverse environmental factors such as hypoxia(low oxygen conditions) on the metabolism of fishes. Clearly the global aquatic environment has become affected by those factors, especially the past few decades. In the research performed, we use primarily non-invasive, non-destructive techniques like spectroscopy. This approach has three advantages:

1. Each animal serves as it own control (effects of the different experimental situations are studied in the same experimental animal), enabling us to minimize the size of the experimental group and reduce the number of experimental animals.
2. The techniques are animal friendly, since, after initial handling, the animals appear stress free during the course of the experiment.
3. The three techniques have the physiological advantage that their are no artifacts due to the killing of the animal or extraction  of tissue.

Incidentally, conventional biochemical techniques based on extraction of metabolites,  followed by qualification and quantification via HPLC(high-performance liquid chromatography), have also been performed.

The-influence-of-hypoxia