How the DNA We Leave Behind Can Help Conservation
We are constantly shedding DNA.
Skin cells smeared on the handle of a mug, fallen hairs, and various body fluids cast our unique genetic code into our environment. Everyone else sheds too––from trees and birds all the way down to microbes. Bits of DNA linger on the forest floor, in sewage, in the ocean, and even in the air. While usually invisible, these ubiquitous strands of genetic evidence have stories to tell, especially when researchers scoop them up into a tube and take them back to the lab.
Scientists call these lingering strands “environmental DNA,” or “eDNA,” and the technology to analyze them is making its way into ecology.
“They’re collecting bees’ DNA from flower pollen. They’re collecting eDNA of lynx and bobcats from a track in the snow,” says James Birch, a researcher at MBARI, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who is developing an underwater eDNA-sampling robot. “[Environmental] DNA is allowing us to see the natural world, even when the organisms that make up that world are not in our visual field.”