Project: Revolutionising risk assessment

Challenge Space

Environment Challenge

Prinicipal Investigator(s) and team names

 Dr Konstantinos Grintzalis, Izabela Antepowicz, Antonia Despotidi, Emma Rowan, Anne Leung 

Collaborating Institutions

Funding support

Research Ireland, EU

Project start date

1 September 2020

End date

Current

Problem

The increase in human population inflicts detrimental effects on the planet with significant environmental impacts such as pollution and climate change. We are now at the point that pollution kills more than diseases, and this makes more imperative to safeguard the environment. 

Background

Conventional approaches for monitoring water quality rely on analytical tests, however, these fall approaches can only capture the spectrum of pollutants known. In addition, there is no information for pollutants that are below analytical threshold. Finally, these methods cannot provide mechanistic insight on the action of pollutants and as such they fall short to identify early or predict pollution. 

Solution

This is why environmental risk assessment is now shifting towards Novel Approach Methodologies (or NAMs) and the inclusion of bioindicators as key metrics for pollution monitoring. DCU Life Sciences Institute brings together expertise in freshwater biology and molecular biology in collaboration with the UFZ Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, the University of Aveiro and other institutions abroad. 

Using daphnids as key species in ecology and ecotoxicology, the aim is to employ novel phenotypic and molecular endpoints to assess the impact of pollutants on their physiology and effectively translate these species to an equivalent of a canary in the coal mine.