Screening a chemical library of marine pollutants for toxicity and biotransformation.

Human activities release significant loads of pollutants into marine ecosystems, but there is an incomplete knowledge about the mechanistic impacts of pollution on marine biology. For instance, it is unclear which pollutants exert what damage, and which organisms act as hotspots for pollutant toxicity, bioaccumulation, or biotransformation. This project will establish a chemical library of 500 priority marine pollutants, and develop high-throughput mechanistic readouts of chemical-biology interactions in marine organisms. This will involve measurements of compound toxicity in marine phytoplankton cultures, as well as bacterial biotransformation assays.

Collaborators

Vincent Group, EMBL Heidelberg