Department Environmental Toxicology

Our research helps to protect aquatic ecosystems by understanding the effects that chemicals and other stressors have on aquatic animals.

In order to characterize interactions between chemicals and organisms, we study the uptake, biotransformation, elimination and distribution of chemicals in organisms or isolated cells. Further, we link concentrations of aquatic pollutants in organisms (internal exposure) to resulting biological effects. Here we are particularly interested in their relationship on different biological levels, from the genome to cells to organisms.

We apply our experimental data to advance models, such as cellular network models or mechanistic toxicokinetic-toxicodynamic models, in order to identify commonalities in biological responses to chemicals, test and develop hypotheses and quantify ecotoxicological effects. Both, the mechanistic understanding gained from our research as well as its representation in models are used to support the assessment of risks to the environment.