Next Generation Biosensing for Environmental Management

Toxic contaminants in the environment can be anthropogenic, e.g. drugs, PCBs or naturally occurring, e.g. marine and freshwater toxins, mycotoxins and pathogens. Numerous contaminants have been shown to enter food webs with immediate negative short term and longer term impacts on plant, animal and human health. Limited monitoring is currently performed for various contaminants and pathogens often by different authorities and different analytical methodologies whereby the data generated is not combined and evaluated holistically relative to other environmental parameters, including climatic conditions. As such a greater holistic awareness is required of our natural environment for government authorities to improve monitoring of our food and water supply chain for toxic contaminants and pathogens from environment to farm to fork. By implementing a one health security strategy commencing with the natural environment and using the marine environment and aquaculture production as an example, the aim of this project is to examine affordable, sensitive, specific, user friendly, rapid and robust, equipment free and deliverable to end users (ASSURED) multiplex diagnostic tools for bioanalytical monitoring tools that can monitor key contaminants and pathogens simultaneously.

The proposed research project will undertake:

A. The strategic development and evaluation of innovative, cutting edge, next generation prototype ASSURED nanodiagnostic tools for the combined and simultaneous monitoring and surveillance of pathogenic microorganisms (bacteria and viruses), chemical contaminants and marine biotoxins of concern to the aquaculture industry for sustainable food security, safeguarding the industry and protecting human health.

B. To utilise prototype technologies in comparison to current-state of the art methods to conduct process studies to assess the current status of the aquaculture environment for pathogenic microorganisms, chemical contaminants and marine biotoxins through the analysis of current samples and historical data collected in NI during a 20 year programme of monitoring.

C. The historical physical, chemical and biological data that has been collated over the same period of time at different sites and a road map will be created that can be used to identify gaps in knowledge for evaluating areas of growth and the potential effects of climate change for the industry.