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The Institute of Physical Biology is a non-for-profit research organisation in the field of biophysics. We are a RTD project-oriented organisation, but also with educational (workshops, publishing) goals. Our expertise is understanding biological processes from a physical and mathematical perspective and process analysis based on fundamental understanding of molecular biology and cell physiology. We design and develop biological sensor systems (bioassays, microelectronic and optoelectronic) for detecting environmental changes and apply them in environmental protection, ecotoxicology, physiology and ecology.
Our role in the Center of Excellence Environmnetal Technologies is to develop new technologies and devices for monitoring the physiological state of ecoremediation systems and the development of new ecotoxcological bioassays. The results provide better quantification of operation of ecoremediation systems and suggest new marketable technologies of monitoring in ecophysiology.
Laboratory for ecophysiology and ecotoxicity bioassays
The new EU legislation gives higher importance to biological parameters in environmental state assessment. Biological parameters improve the relevance of environmental state assessment (compared to the physico-chemical parameters) but are generally qualitative. The quantification of biological parameters is one of the main goals in the development and introduction of ecophysiological methods.
The methods used include stress assessment, bioaccumulation of pollutants, etc. Some methods are non-invasive and are applied in the field (reflectometry, fluorometry), others are performed on tissue samples in the laboratory (enzyme activities, antioxidants, bioaccumulation). The effectiveness of water treatment is monitored with a battery of bioassays on different trophic levels.
Remote sensing with reflectometry
Reflectometry is a tool for remote sensing of single plants or vegetation cover. Vegetation indices are calculated from reflectance data and are spectral transformations of two or more bandwidths of reflected light spectrum from vegetation surface. They provide space-time information on photosynthetic activity, type and morphology of plant ecosystem, which enables seasonal, annual or longer-period monitoring of physiological, structural, phenological and biophysical parameters.
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