Next generation metabarcoding for environmental och dietary DNA

The biological variety and variability of life is considered a prerequisite for intact and functioning ecosystems. Hence, the loss of this biodiversity poses a serious global threat to our society.

The spread of invasive and pathogenic species is a real problem that can have far-reaching effects on food and drinking water safety.

Efficient, large-scale and reproducible monitoring and modeling of biodiversity is lacking and is therefore a societal challenge that requires new approaches.

Our project will address this challenge by developing new powerful methods for biodiversity assessment and enable the detection of species of interest as well as making these methods more accessible to authorities and companies.The goal of our project is to develop new effective and highly sensitive DNA sequencing technology for environmental monitoring.

Ultrasensitive single molecule sequencing will be combined with fully automated bioinformatic workflows.

This includes dietary and water samples that allow improved marine biodiversity monitoring and the reconstruction of marine food webs.

The project partners include two start-up companies with expertise in DNA based diagnostics and bioinformatics as well as three Universities providing matching competences and test cases for method evaluation and knowledge transfer to governmental agencies.