Course description
The course will be given as an intensive one-week combination of lectures and practical experiments, and is based on the research developments in the 6th European Framework Program FACEiT. Internationally renowned scientists from the FACEiT consortium will provide the course, with a number of guest speakers completing the program.
The course integrates the basic concepts of pollution bioavailability for ecotoxicity and for biodegradation with classical ecotox assays and various novel rapid end-point biological assays on an array of aquatic organisms of different complexity. The idea being here that classical ecotox methods or strategies to judge pollution impact can be linked to more rapid and less elaborate tools, which one day might replace or expand the established tests. Examples of those methods are: bacterial bioreporter technology, human gene reporter technology, zebrafish development assays and phytoplankton flow cytometry. In addition to this, the course will present a number of molecular based methods to analyze and predict the recovery possiblities for pollution damaged ecosystems, with particular relevance to pollutant biodegradation possibilities. These methods consist of microbial community analysis coupled to quantitative reverse transcription PCR and community ELISA.
The complete practical aspect of the course will be centered around the analysis of an artificial laboratory-scale oil spill into an aquatic environment. Participants will have ample time to perform the various experiments themselves, discuss the results in the group and with the course scientists. A final day of plenary presentations will conclude all activities.
The course will be given in English.

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