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Shelly Persaud, Hogeschool Leiden
In recent years marine invasive species, i.e. species that are introduced in an area outside of their native distribution, have had an increased impact worldwide. This is at least partly due to global warming and partly due to intensified boat traffic. They can e.g. threaten public health, be a great nuisance for tourists, and cause substantial economical damage to marine systems and related industry. The rapid detection of a new species being tranported into Dutch waters in e.g. the ballastwater of boats coming from the American coast, can be of great help to reduce the chance of these species settling and becoming harmfull to our ecosystem and economy. For the rapid detection of marine invasive species, rapid species identification techniques are of the uttermost importance. Identifying organisms in their early life stages, e.g. in their larval stages in the ballastwater of a boat, on the basis of morphology can be a difficult to impossible task. DNA-barcoding as an identification technique is therefore becoming more and more popular. By sequencing the DNA of an organism and by comparing the resulting sequence with the known DNA-barcodes of a range of species, one can easily identify any organism. A disadvantage of the method is that one can only identify species of which the DNA has already been sequenced in the past. For that purpose GiMaRIS has joined forces with the TOPlab of the Leiden University of Applied Sciences. Marine species, both natives and non-natives, are identified on the basis on their morphology in the GiMaRIS lab after which they are sequenced in the TOPlab, with the well appreciated help of students like Shelly.
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