RhizoFlowCell system reveals early effects of micropollutants on aquatic plant rhizosphere.

In aquatic systems, one of the non-destructive ways to quantify toxicity of contaminants to plants is to monitor changes in root exudation patterns. In aquatic conditions, monitoring and quantifying such changes are currently challenging because of dilution of root exudates in water phase and lack of suitable instrumentation to measure them. Exposure to pollutants would not only change the plant exudation, but also affect the microbial communities that surround the root zone, thereby changing the metabolic profiles of the rhizosphere.

Genetic programming-based approach to elucidate biochemical interaction networks from data.

Biochemical systems are characterised by cyclic/reversible reciprocal actions, non-linear interactions and a mixed relationship structures (linear and non-linear; static and dynamic). Deciphering the architecture of such systems using measured data to provide quantitative information regarding the nature of relationships that exist between the measured variables is a challenging proposition. Causality detection is one of the methodologies that are applied to elucidate biochemical networks from such data.