Separating the effects of pollutants and other pressures on biodiversity: omics and multifactor analysis partner

Datharsis, a University of Granada spin-off specialised in explainable omics data analysis, is looking to join a consortium as the partner responsible for omics data analysis and integration, either leading the data analysis work package or contributing specific analysis tasks.

Understanding the impact of PFAS, the effects of clean and digital industries, or the decline of invertebrates means untangling several pressures acting at once: pollutant dose, exposure time, industrial activity, species, tissue, site, season and climate. Our methods (ASCA, vASCA and group-wise models) are built for exactly this. They separate the effect of each factor and their interactions, identify the metabolites or genes behind each effect, and show it clearly, instead of producing a black-box prediction. Our team also brings experience in multivariate monitoring of industrial processes.

Our team has applied these methods to:

• The effect of contaminants across three tissues of crabs

• The effect of mistletoe parasitism on the pine metabolome, separated from season, individual tree and canopy height

• Warming trends in high mountain lakes, separating the shared climate signal from the features of each lake

What we offer:

• Design of exposure experiments and field sampling from the proposal stage

• Interpretable analysis of omics and environmental data

• Reproducible, FAIR-aligned analysis pipelines

• Access to DathaSuite, our analysis platform

• Training for consortium researchers in these methods

We are looking for consortia in ecotoxicology, invertebrate ecology, environmental chemistry or industrial ecology with laboratory or field capacity that need a partner to design studies and analyse complex data rigorously.