Researchers are now vacuuming DNA from the air

Summary

Dublin is known as a city where you can enjoy a few pints of Guiness, get a warm welcome from the locals and hear lively traditional music drifting out of pubs and into the city air. But it's not just music floating on the breeze. The air of Dublin also contains cannabis, poppy, even magic mushrooms -- at least their DNA. That's according to a new study that reveals the power of DNA, vacuumed up from the air, which can track everything from elusive bobcats to illicit drugs. "The level of information that's available in environmental DNA is such that we're only starting to consider what the potential applications can be, from humans, to wildlife to other species that have implications for human health," said David Duffy, Ph.D., a professor of wildlife disease genomics at the University of Florida and lead author of a new study showing the widespread utility of DNA vacuumed from the air. Housed at UF's Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, Duffy's lab developed new methods for deciphering environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, to study sea turtle genetics. They've expanded the tools to study every species -- including humans -- from DNA captured in environmental samples like water, soil and sand. But these errant strands of DNA do not just settle into muddy soil or flow along rivers. The air itself is infused with genetic material. A simple air filter running for hours, days or weeks can pick up signs of nearly every species that grows or wanders nearby. "When we started, it seemed like it would be hard to get intact large fragments of DNA from the air. But that's not the case. We're actually finding a lot of informative DNA," Duffy said. "That means you can study species without directly having to disturb them, without ever having to see them. It opens up huge possibilities to study all the species in an area simultaneously, from microbes and viruses all the way up to vertebrates like bobcats and humans, and everything in between." As a proof of concept, the rese...