Chemical contamination of our natural ecosystems is regarded as one of the planet’s greatest threats (The Lancet, 2017). In particular, human activities result in the discharge of many chemicals into aquatic ecosystems. Regulatory agencies and businesses are tasked with managing these chemicals but face significant challenges due to the sheer number of compounds for which toxicity data are required as well as the plethora of different species requiring protection, including humans. In fact, over 100,000 chemicals require evaluation worldwide. It becomes increasingly apparent that current risk assessment strategies that rely heavily on animal testing and are prohibitively time-consuming and expensive are not able to address these testing mandates.

The research conducted in my laboratory focuses on addressing these challenges by 1) developing high-throughput molecular early life-stage toxicity assays to facilitate rapid and more ethical testing of chemicals while significantly reducing the number of live animals; and 2) developing modeling approaches that enable predicting the sensitivity of native fish species to environmental contaminants of concern.

Roles and responsibilities:

• Plan and conduct short-term exposure studies with early life-stages of fishes or amphibians.
• Routine water quality assessment and maintenance of exposure experiments.
• Bio-analytical investigations (determine growth, deformities and mortality of fish; collect tissues and analyze sub-lethal biological effects such as changes in gene expression, biochemical homeostasis, develop toxicity models linking mechanistic toxicity data with apical outcome of regulatory relevance).
• Interact with stakeholders from industry and government.
• Statistical data evaluation.
• Write a summary report, and - if permitted by the data - contribute to writing a peer-reviewed publication (student will be listed as a co-author).
• The student will need to complete the following safety course at the U of S before any work can commence (all courses are offered online):
  • Animal Ethics Training,
  • Biosafety,
  • Laboratory Safety.

Skills required:

• Very good English reading and writing skills.
• Natural science (biology) background with some laboratory experience (pipetting, etc.).
• Experience with working with aquatic vertebrates will be beneficial but is not critical.
• Basic knowledge in statistical evaluation of data sets is expected.

Lead: Markus Hecker
Professor, SENS; Canada Research Chair in Predictive Aquatic Ecotoxicology
markus.hecker@usask.ca 

• Markus Hecker

This project will be imbedded within a larger project focussed on ‘Omics’ approaches to Water Quality funded by the Global Water Futures Program. The specific goals of the overall project are to use detailed non-targeted chemical analysis to assess the nature of the dissolved organic matter present in all aquatic ecosystems. We use OrbiTrap mass spectrometry to measure all the chemicals present in water samples. Interpretation and assimilation of the raw mass spectrometry data into usable chemoinformatic information requires extensive data handling. The best available platform for this data handling in the R platform however the data analysis still requires advanced skills in R programming. This project will focus on the development of an R application which will permit the required chemoinformatic analysis based on already available sample sets. In addition, depending on progress, we may develop new mass spectrometry data approaches for data acquisition.

Roles and responsibilities:

• Collect (depending on weather) and prepare water samples for chemical analysis.
• Write a summary report, and - if permitted by the data - contribute to writing a peer-reviewed publication (student will be listed as a co-author).
• All R code generated as part of the project will need to be fully annotated and will be considered to be the joint intellectual property of the PI and the student.
• The student will need to complete the following safety course at the University of Saskatchewan before any work can commence (courses are between 1/2 and 1 day long): 
  • Laboratory Safety

Skills required:

• Very good English reading and writing skills.
• Strong experience with R programming language is required.
• Natural science background with some laboratory (pipetting, etc.) experience.
• The student should be willing to participate in possible field excursions to collect samples.
• Basic knowledge in statistical evaluation of data sets is expected.

Lead: Paul Jones
Professor, SENS/Toxicology Program
paul.jones@usask.ca

• Paul Jones