How Airborne DNA Could Revolutionize Conservation

Elizabeth Clare ’s airborne eDNA projection is a winner of the2023 Gizmodo Science Fairfor demonstrating a way to use airborne DNA to unveil which species are present in an environment .

The Question

Can you identify nearby animals just by collecting their desoxyribonucleic acid from the air ?

The Results

The squad sample aviation from the tunnel of a naked mole stinkpot home ground in a science lab and found deoxyribonucleic acid from the rats ( and , no surprise , they also regain human DNA ) . A bigger test of the technique encounter at an open - zephyr menagerie in the UK . The squad was able to key legion zoo animals just from the microscopic genetic material contained in the air samples .

Why They Did It

“ This is still in the region of forensic preservation bionomics . We are dealing with the diminutive amount of desoxyribonucleic acid I ’ve ever handled in my research lab , which also stand for the high risk of contamination and just absolutely lose the signal to yourself , ” said undertaking conduce Elizabeth Clare , a molecular ecologist at York University in Canada . “ I ’ve never worried so much about literally suspire near my workstation . ”

“ One matter that is really exciting about airborne DNA is that it give us a high throughput and potentially automated way to monitor terrestrial ecosystems , which we ’ve never had before , ” said Joanne Littlefair , biologist at Queen Mary University in the UK . “ In lots of places in the world , we are really shin with biologic monitoring , either because of the sheer scale leaf of the job or because some species are uncommon or very baffling or nocturnal and unmanageable to see . And when we see at airborne DNA , it is an effective way to supervise many different mathematical group of taxon in biology . That has all kind of exciting implication for preservation . ”

Why Airborne DNA Is Winner

Airborne eDNA ( stenography for environmental DNA ) could overhaul the way scientist understand environment and the organisms that move through them . Other type of environmental DNA solicitation already subsist ; researcher can pull together water sample in marine surround and soil samples in terrestrial environments . The air - sampling technology is nascent , but it ’s an inventive way to make headway environmental DNA research . Other enquiry teams are also behave airborne eDNA study , showing that the approach is consistent . If its methods are perfected , biologists will be able to supervise populations of multiple metal money in an orbit without straightaway keep an eye on them , learning how those populations fluctuate with breeding seasons , extreme atmospheric condition , and other factor .

What’s Next

Researchers — Clare ’s team and others — will go on to try out the applications programme and limit of airborne eDNA collection and sampling in dissimilar environments . More work needs to be done to understand how much information can be harvest from air sampling ; for exercise , whether sum of money of deoxyribonucleic acid in the air correspond to a species ’ biomass in the environment . The method also needs to be applied in a motley of locations , to understand if it will work on as well in tropical or arid capable - air environs as it does in bat roost , defenseless seawall rat tunnels , and zoos . If airborne DNA takes off , it could be used to show the persistence of creature feared nonextant or to reveal how invasive species are spread out .

The Team

Elizabeth Clare , York University ; Katherine Adams , Hamerton Zoological Park ; Frances Bennett , Queen Mary University of London ; Andrew Briscoe , Nature Metrics ; Rosie Drinkwater , Ludwig - Maximillian University Munich ; Caitlin Dyer , Queen Mary University of London ; Chloe Economou , Syngenta ; Chris Faulkes , Queen Mary University of London ; Brock Fenton , Western University ; Charles Francis , Canadian Wildlife Service ; Emma Froehlich , Northern Arizona University , Flagstaff ; Nina Garrett , York University ; James Gilbert , Queen Mary University of London ; Natalia Ivanova , Nature Metrics North America ; Joanne Littlefair , Queen Mary University of London ; Alejandro Maeda - Obregon , University College London ; Ben McRobie , Hamerton Zoological Park ; Amanda Naaum , Nature Metrics North America ; Daniel Sanchez , Northern Arizona University , Flagstaff ; Nancy Simmons , American Museum of Natural History ; Faith Walker , Northern Arizona University , Flagstaff ; and Jonathan Watkins , Queensland University of Technology .

See the full list of Gizmodo Science Fair winners

BiologyGizmodo Science Fair