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, probably automated strategy to observe the variety and distribution of life.
Not like earlier strategies, which may determine DNA from, say, a single organism, the strategy additionally collects the swirling cloud of different genetic materials that surrounds it. It might function a surveillance instrument, providing researchers a way of detecting the seemingly undetectable.
By sampling eDNA, or mixtures of genetic materials in water, soil, ice cores, cotton swabs, or virtually any atmosphere conceivable, even skinny air, it’s now doable to seek for a selected organism or assemble a snapshot of all of the organisms in a given place.
It affords an exhilarating — and probably chilling — strategy to gather details about organisms, together with people, as they go about their on a regular basis enterprise. Learn the total story.
—Peter Andrey Smith
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