Researchers in Zurich are using drones to collect environmental DNA (eDNA) in a technique combining robotics and genetics that could change our understanding of Earth’s biodiversity.
The technology that the team of Kristy Deiner is testing is designed to accelerate the collection of data on diversity, Deiner says as we step off the platform and into the lush vegetation. Up ahead, a group of students is setting up a portable lab. A few metres away, a pump is sucking water from a pond.
The mini lab enables the sequencing of environmental DNA (eDNA), the genetic material released by every living species in water, the air, the soil, on tree branches and on the screen of the device on which you are reading this article. The analysis of eDNA is a rapidly emerging research method and has opened up possibilities that were unimaginable even just a few years ago. In the past, biologists had to go to the field to list the species present in a given place.
Now, more information can be extracted from a test tube of water or a strip of adhesive brushed through the branches of a tree than from an army of biologists camped out for days in the jungle.