Novel methodologies to assess the environmental health of freshwater systems. (5057)

Freshwater ecosystems are some of the most threatened on earth, receiving a complex cocktail of natural and man-made chemicals as a result of human activity. These, together with alterations in abiotic parameters (such as temperature, pH and oxygen levels) result in complex exposure scenarios. The complexity of these scenarios poses a major challenge when assessing exposure impacts, and determining safe environmental levels, of novel and existing chemical threats, in the context of individual organisms or ecosystem health.

Overcoming this challenge requires the development of highly advanced, innovative, high-throughput approaches for rapid and detailed assessment of chemical exposures. Whilst such advances have been made for many vertebrate models, because of the perception these groups are more important, analogous approaches are currently lacking for many invertebrate groups and for freshwater systems.

This creates a significant knowledge gap, which represents a major barrier to the assessment of the health of aquatic organisms and ecosystems.

This project directly addresses this issue, developing and applying highly novel high-throughput methodologies that enable the comprehensive assessment of environmental pollutant impacts on invertebrate systems, with a level of complexity prohibited by existing approaches. As a result, this project will ultimately facilitate the reduction of anthropogenic impacts and the better protection of biodiversity in freshwater environments.

Project Aims and Methods:

The aim of this PhD is to demonstrate and advance the utilisation of a highly novel approach for environmental chemical assessment in freshwater ecosystems. By combining toxicogenomics to determine the effects of environmental chemicals, as well as their mixtures, on freshwater invertebrates, with advanced imaging and data analysis for high-throughput phenotyping (EmbryoPhenomics), this project will develop a rapid and in-depth method to assess the impacts of aquatic stressors on biota.

The projects three main objectives are:

1 - Develop a combination of phenomics (high-throughput imaging, computer vision, deep learning) and transcriptomic (next-generation-sequencing) methodologies to generate an integrated assessment of the impacts of exposure to environmental chemicals and their mixtures on the transcriptome and phenome of aquatic organisms.

2 - Compare the sensitivity and robustness of these methodologies across vertebrates and invertebrates, using Daphnia pulex and Danio rerio as model systems.

3 - Implement the methodology to generate assessments of the impacts of environmental pollutants in the real world environments of the Living Labs (focusing on the Exe/Tamar/Dart lab). Project partners:

Jonathan Newman, Senior Policy Advisor, Biologically active substances; Environment Agency; [email protected]; Oliver Tills, EmbryoPhenomics CIC; [email protected]; https://www.embryophenomics.org/;

The project builds on two key collaborative projects that are on-going between the University of Exeter and the Environment Agency, as well as with the EmbryoPhenomics CIC. Moreover, it builds on the extensive collaboration between researchers based at Exeter and Cardiff Universities, and leverages the opportunities afforded by the establishment of the Centre for Environment, Waste and Water, a collaborative centre between the University of Exeter and South West Water.

As a result the project supervisory team provide an ideal platform for world-class student training, offering a combination of state-of-the-art facilities and expertise, as well as the ability to undertake fundamental and applied research of direct industrial relevance. Ultimately it will enable the student to address a question of key strategic importance, namely how we can advance chemical testing in freshwater ecosystems.