Grants Program

Costa Mesa, CA

The eDNA Collaborative is a sponsor of the 2nd National Workshop on Marine eDNA to be held at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRP) in Costa Mesa, California in September 2022. Over four days, there will be training sessions, plenary speakers, and breakout groups, all focused on accelerating the incorporation of eDNA science into environmental management applications. The workshop is a follow up to the 1st National Conference on Marine eDNA hosted by The Rockefeller University in 2018.

National Museum of Natural History

A Regional Fish Library for the Coral Triangle

The Coral Triangle, including Indonesia, is the global marine biodiversity hotpot. Environmental DNA (eDNA) approaches are transforming our ability to monitor marine communities and inform management practices for this critical region of the world. Building better reference libraries to assure the technology records species of concern will be important for accurate assessments of marine communities and impactful for managers and stakeholders. Working with Indonesian colleagues, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will utilize one of the world’s largest marine collections to develop genetic barcodes for key fish species to complete the species lists for the region. Natural history museums and their collections continue to be an invaluable resource by supporting our ability to document life of our planet and improving our ability to sustain critical marine resources.

Diponegoro University, Semarang, Indonesia

Democratizing eDNA in Marine most Biodiverse Country using MinION: Bioinformatic analysis and field protocol development

There are growing interests in applying Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) methods in biodiversity research in Indonesia particularly to detect magnitude of marine biodiversity and to reveal cryptic and inconspicuous. The application of NGS in Indonesia might reveal higher magnitudes of biodiversity compared to existing traditional methods that are often missed in many taxa. Nonetheless its application is hampered by the high cost of sequencing methods and poor data processing and bioinformatic skills. Although solutions are available (e.g., sending samples outside Indonesia to sequencing facilities) this might impose permitting and legal issues. In this context, Nanopore MinION sequencing thus offers a solution. Its simplicity and affordability in generating sequence and ability for in-situ deployment might omit potential permitting issues. Bioinformatics pipelines are also publicly available and hence, the device is promising to be implemented Indonesian wide to democratize the science and the tools to the Indonesia research community. Currently, there are still limited projects and workable models implemented in Indonesia.