GENHANCE · GENome Health via Adductomics for Next-generation Contaminant Effect assessment

Environmental assessment of chemical contaminants still relies largely on concentration measurements, while biological effect methods remain underused, being viewed as less precise or harder to interpret. Yet such methods are essential for detecting mixture effects and showing when exposure translates into ecological risk under real-world conditions. DNA adductomics offers a way forward: by profiling modifications of nucleic acids in wildlife, it produces molecular fingerprints that often reveal contaminant sources and toxic mechanisms, capturing both exposure and its biological consequences.To give these fingerprints ecological meaning, they must be anchored in a sentinel species with well-established health endpoints. Amphipods provide this anchor, as their reproductive disorders are sensitive indicators of developmental toxicity from sediment contamination and are already applied in the Baltic monitoring programmes. Building on this foundation, GENHANCE will develop a Genome Health Indicator (GHI) that connects adductome fingerprints with reproductive disorders as organism-level outcomes in amphipods.GENHANCE integrates field evidence from amphipod samples from the long-term Baltic monitoring with controlled bioassays and mesocosm experiments to identify diagnostic adductome signatures, establish thresholds that separate background variation from contaminant-induced injury, and develop a multimetric GHI. Embedding this indicator into weight-of-evidence frameworks with chemical and organism-level data will advance biological effect methods from descriptive to predictive tools.Secondments at HELCOM and the Estonian Environment Agency will ensure regulatory uptake, testing GHIs in regional assessments and national monitoring. GENHANCE thus advances mechanistic ecotoxicology at the basic science level while delivering decision-ready tools that strengthen Europe’s leadership in exposomics, risk forecasting, MSFD implementation, and One Health protection.