The ability to extract trace bits of DNA from soil, water, and even air is revolutionizing science. Are there pitfalls?
This article was originally featured on Undark. In the late 1980s, at a federal research facility in Pensacola, Florida, Tamar Barkay used mud in a way that proved revolutionary in a manner she could never have imagined at the time: a crude version of a technique that is now shaking up many scientific fields. Barkay had collected several samples of mud—one from an inland reservoir, another from a brackish bayou, and a third from a low-lying saltwater swamp.
“eDNA, one way or the other, is going to stay as one of the important methodologies in biological sciences,” said Mehrdad Hajibabaei, a molecular biologist at University of Guelph, who pioneered the metabarcoding approach, and who traced fish some 9,800 feet under the Labrador Sea. “Every day I see something bubbling up that didn’t occur to me.” In recent years, the field of eDNA has expanded.
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