Impact of pharmaceuticals in the marine environment in a changing world

About the project

The discharge of pharmaceuticals into rivers from wastewater treatment plants is well established and deleterious effects have been reported in freshwater biota. River discharge, along with direct input into coastal regions has seen the rise in the concentrations of drugs in estuarine and coastal water which are emerging as contaminants of growing concern. To date, very little work has been carried out on the effects of pharmaceuticals on estuarine or marine organisms [1]. Many human drug targets are conserved within other phyla (algae, invertebrates, non-human vertebrates) [2] and thus they have the potential to exert an effect. Currently we do not know which marine phyla are more susceptible or which class of pharmaceuticals may pose the biggest risk. A concern would be that some algae may be particularly sensitive with primary production being affected. Many drugs are ionisable with uptake rates being affected by very small changes in pH [3]. Ocean acidification will inevitably affect bioavailability and uptake. Within marine fishes several tissues (e.g., eye, swim bladder) rely on localized changes in blood pH to release oxygen from hemoglobin that may well alter tissue specific ionisable drug distribution. Thus, the project aims to use a suite of techniques from bioinformatics through to ecophysiology to assess which marine organism may be sensitive to pharmaceuticals and which class of drugs we should be most concerned about.

For full project details visit the Inspire project page .

Supervisors

• Dr Nic Bury (University of Southampton)
• Professor Chris Hauton (University of Southampton)

Dr Nic Bury

• Nic Bury's research integrates molecular, physiological and toxicological techniques with computational methods to understand and predict how aquatic organisms respond to, and are affected by, natural and man-induced stressors.

Professor Chris Hauton PhD, FRSB, FMBA

• Hauton has worked extensively with colleagues in India and Bangladesh since 2015 and has developed an international profile in shrimp health research, including contributing to the development of a mobile phone app, the 'Chingri Shrimp App', to support shrimp farmer training in Bangladesh.
• Research has also included quantifying the potential toxic risk of deep sea mining of mineral resources. He was part of the leading team of the EC FP7 MIDAS Project, exploring the ecological risk of deep-sea mining, outputs from which led to contributions to the Royal Society Foresight Future of the Sea report (2016/17), to presentations at the UN International Seabed Authority in Jamaica, and expert contributions to the UN ISA ISA Legal and Technical Commision ISBA/27/C/11 'Guidelines for the establishment of baseline environmental data.'
• Other activity

Entry requirements

A 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent , in one of these subjects:

• biology
• chemistry
• oceanography or marine science

How to apply

Find out how to make an application by visiting the National Oceanography Centre's Graduate School apply pages .

Contact us

For questions about the project, email Dr Nicolas Bury:

For questions about the application process, email the graduate school office:

• n.r.bury@soton.ac.uk
• gsnocs@soton.ac.uk

Research areas