- Course overview
- Search within this course
- Environmental DNA
- DNA metabarcoding and its applications
- Workflow for eDNA metabarcoding
- DADA2 for analysing metabarcoding data
- Taxonomic classification to assess biodiversity
- Statistics principles in data analysis
- Advances in biodiversity exploration
- Open data resources for eDNA
- Bringing data to life: Data management and sharing
- Further learning
- Your feedback
- References
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Environmental DNA
Environmental DNA (eDNA) refers to DNA found in environmental samples such as soil, water, and air. This DNA originates from various biological sources, including skin, mucous, saliva, gametes, blood, pollen, fruit, urine, faeces, and intact microbial cells like fungi, bacteria, protists, and archaea (Pawlowski et al. 2020). It can also exist as “free extracellular DNA”.
Exploring eDNA for studying biodiversity
Exploring eDNA is valuable because it helps identify species that are difficult to survey, enables early detection of invasive and rare species, and provides historical biodiversity data from sources like frozen sediments and museum specimens. Additionally, eDNA methods are often quicker, cheaper, and more sensitive than other established techniques. Molecular techniques, particularly eDNA metabarcoding, are essential for studying microbial communities in microbial ecology research (Compson et al. 2020).
In the following sections you will learn in detail about DNA metabarcoding, its applications and a general workflow required in studying biodiversity via eDNA analysis.
