Information present in the environment
Environmental DNA is DNA studied from samples taken in an environment. We study it in water, soil, sediment and biofilms to identify species and answer monitoring questions.
The question sets the approach
Surveying a community and looking for one species do not lead to the same analysis. Metabarcoding, metagenomics, dPCR or long reads: each approach answers a type of question.
Thinking about the whole chain
Design, sampling, molecular analyses, sequencing and bioinformatics are linked. Interpretation must return to the initial question and to the context of the environment studied.