Ben Nota

Research interests

My interests are genomics and molecular biology in combination with ecology and evolutionary biology. I make use of novel tools and techniques, especially microarrays, to investigate the changes in gene expression in response to stress (mostly environmental pollutants).
During my PhD research at this department, I constructed and used a microarray for the springtail Folsomia candida, which is a standard test organism for soil ecotoxicology. Using microarray gene expression analysis, molecular (cellular) mechanisms of toxicity can be elucidated. Also, toxicant-specific gene expression profiles can be used for soil quality screening purposes.
In my current research, which is a part of the ECOLINC program, I investigate the evolution of transcriptomes. With comparative functional genomics methods I compare the transcriptional response to the toxicant zinc in springtails (F. candida) and water fleas (Daphnia pulex). Next generation sequencing is used to find orthologs between the two different species.

Former project:
Development of the invertebrate soil quality chip (iSQ)

Publications:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=search&term=nota%20b