Research project Mechanistic understanding of phytoplankton sensitivity to chemical mixtures: ecological consequences

Phytoplankton in ocean form the entrance point of organic contaminants into the food web and play a key role in global biogeochemistry, yet our understanding of how contaminants impact phytoplankton is poor. One challenge is to quantify chemical pollution, as chemicals occur in mixtures where concentrations cannot be directly added up to assess total toxicity. Another challenge is that much focus of current research is on effects of single or few chemicals, or on high throughput screening of sub-cellular effects that are challenging to translate to ecological implications. Here, we take a novel, interdisciplinary approach to understand the biological mechanisms behind population-scale effects of chemical mixtures. Using chemical activity as a quantitative measure of mixtures we will investigate how temperature shifts and nutrient limitation affect phytoplankton sensitivity to pollution through regulation of cell lipid content and composition. We aim to generate new mechanistic knowledge that will yield hypotheses on how chemical pollution-induced effects transfer to ocean biogeochemical cycling.