Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/R002142/1
A platform for environmental phenomics
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor S Rundle, University of Plymouth, Sch of Biological and Marine Sciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor J Spicer, University of Plymouth, Sch of Eng, Comp and Math (SECaM)
- Grant held at:
- University of Plymouth, Sch of Biological and Marine Sciences
- Science Area:
- Freshwater
- Marine
- Overall Classification:
- Unknown
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Pollution and Waste
- Science Topics:
- Animal developmental biology
- Instrumentation Eng. & Dev.
- Environmental Sensors
- Functional Imaging Instrument.
- Intelligent Instrument
- Real-time Monitoring
- Abstract:
- The planet is undergoing an unprecedented environmental alterations and there is an urgent need to understand how species will respond to altered conditions associated with climate change (global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification) and pollutants. Development of new technologies has recently seen a revolution in Biology with the advent of tools that enable us to quantify, in extremely fine detail, how organisms respond to environmental change at the level of molecules and genes. Such environmental -omics approaches to measuring how an organism responds to changes in their environment have become a major theme in Biology, particularly for molecular level -omics. These approaches rely on technologies to automate the generation of large quantities of data in a high-throughput manner. A major objective in our laboratory is to gain a better understanding of how environmental stressors affect the physiology (i.e. the function) and morphology (i.e. the form) of early life stages in aquatic invertebrates. These observable characteristics, the phenome, provide important information on responses at the level of the whole-organism. We have developed a unique bioimaging technology for quantifying the phenome in aquatic embryos. This platform, produces high-resolution (temporal and spatial) time lapse video of large numbers of developing embryos, exposed to tightly controlled environmental conditions. This video is used to quantify aspects of embryonic growth, morphology and physiology. Initially this data extraction was primarily via manual observation, which creates a bottleneck in the application of this technology. Consequently, we have recently developed analytical software that works complimentary to the bioimaging technology and which automates the quantification of the phenome in large numbers of embryos. The analytical software enables the quantification of the phenome from hundreds of millions of images with a resolution and scale that is not possible via manual analysis and consequently it significantly increases the power and high throughput nature of this technology. This pathfinder award would facilitatate market research to determine whether our platform for measuring phenomic responses of aquatic invertebrate embryos has the potential to be extended for use as a general tool in environmental phenomics research, including applications in ecotoxicology and other environmental impact studies. Potential users such as NGOs, water authorities, environmental consultancies and companies in the chemical, pharmaceutical, dyestuffs, plastics and laboratory equipment sectors will be identified and canvassed; and phenomics activities at institutions in UK and elsewhere will be identified. The aim is to use this research to direct and drive a NERC follow-on fund proposal to carry our research targeting phenomic measurements that are of relevance to potential markets.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/R002142/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Innovation
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Follow on Fund Pathfinder
This grant award has a total value of £16,073
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DA - Estate Costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| £13,888 | £665 | £1,353 | £169 |
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