Forensics experts gather DNA to understand who was present at a crime scene.
Forensics experts gather DNA to understand who was present at a crime scene. But what if the crime occurred in the middle of a lake, where DNA could be carried far and wide by wind and waves? That’s the challenge faced by aquatic ecologists who study environmental DNA (eDNA) to monitor endangered animals, track invasive species, or monitor fish populations.
A team of ecologists and engineers from Cornell and the University of Granada has made a breakthrough in understanding eDNA movement in water. Researchers developed synthetic DNA that mimics the behavior of eDNA, released some of it in Cayuga Lake near Cornell’s Ithaca campus, traced its movement for 33 hours, then incorporated their findings into a new model that can predict where a sampled particle of eDNA likely originated in a water body.
The research was published Jan. 20 in Environmental Science & Technology.
“Over the past 15 years, advances in molecular methods have expanded eDNA from single-species detection to community-wide biodiversity monitoring, often making it faster, cheaper and more sensitive than traditional survey methods,” said Jose Andrés, paper co-author and senior research associate in the natural resources and the environment section in the Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). “One of the key challenges, especially in large freshwater and marine environments where eDNA may be mixed quite deeply into the water column and currents may be strong, is knowing when detected DNA was released by the source organism, and how far away the organism was.”
Read More: Cornell University
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