New GEANS publication: ‘Biases in bulk: DNA metabarcoding of marine communities and the methodology involved’
18 August 2020 - Published by Nele Jacobs
DNA metabarcoding of bulk samples is increasingly implemented in ecosystem assessments and is more cost‐efficient and less time‐consuming than monitoring based on morphology. However, before raw sequences are obtained from bulk samples, a profound number of methodological choices must be made.
In a recently published Molecular Ecology paper, Luna van der Loos and Reindert Nijland critically review the recent methods used for metabarcoding of marine bulk samples (including benthic, plankton and diet samples) and indicate how potential biases can be introduced throughout sampling, pre‐processing, DNA extraction, marker and primer selection, PCR amplification and sequencing.
Read the open access paper: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mec.15592