Abstract

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis has emerged as a powerful tool in ecological and conservation research. It involves the extraction and analysis of DNA shed by organisms into their surrounding environment without the need to directly observe or capture the species. This non-invasive approach allows us to gain valuable insights into biodiversity, species distribution, and community composition in a wide range of ecosystems, including marine environments, from which the eDNA in this tutorial originates.

About This Material

This is a Hands-on Tutorial from the GTN which is usable either for individual self-study, or as a teaching material in a classroom.

Questions this will address

• Can we assign taxonomic information to unknown DNA sequences from environmental samples?
• What are the key bioinformatics techniques used in the taxonomic analysis of eDNA sequences?

Learning Objectives

• Upload raw sequencing data to the Galaxy platform.
• Apply read trimming tools to improve the quality of eDNA sequence data.
• Convert sequence data between FASTQ and FASTA formats.
• Perform a BLASTN search against a nucleotide database to identify potential taxonomic matches.
• Extract and interpret taxonomic information from the BLAST output table.