The massive story
How environmental DNA is giving scientists a brand new strategy to perceive our world
February 2024
Environmental DNA is a comparatively cheap, widespread, doubtlessly automated strategy to observe the range and distribution of life.
Not like earlier methods, which may establish DNA from, say, a single organism, the tactic additionally collects the swirling cloud of different genetic materials that surrounds it. It might probably function a surveillance software, providing researchers a method of detecting the seemingly undetectable.
By sampling eDNA, or mixtures of genetic materials in water, soil, ice cores, cotton swabs, or virtually any surroundings possible, even skinny air, it’s now attainable to seek for a particular organism or assemble a snapshot of all of the organisms in a given place.
It affords an exhilarating — and doubtlessly chilling — strategy to gather details about organisms, together with people, as they go about their on a regular basis enterprise. Learn the complete story.
—Peter Andrey Smith
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