eDNA Ashore: Building a Coral Genetic Library

The Ocean Exploration Trust team is proud to work on E/V Nautilus alongside our collaborators across the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute. As we explore the unknown with new efficiencies, we are helping to understand the biodiversity of the deep sea. And one of the most rapidly advancing new technologies for investigating the field is the study of environmental DNA (eDNA). 

Advancing eDNA technologies opens up future capabilities to detect the presence of animals without collecting the animals themselves. In part two of following eDNA samples ashore, meet Dr. Santiago Herrera and his lab group at Lehigh University. Alongside OECI collaborators at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, this team is working to build a genetic reference library to correlate micro pieces of DNA left behind by residents of the deep with verified on-the-ground coral biodiversity!