DNA barcoding Brooklyn (New York): A first assessment of biodiversity in Marine Park by citizen scientists

Abstract

DNA barcoding is both an important research and science education tool. The technique allows for quick and accurate species identification using only minimal amounts of tissue samples taken from any organism at any developmental phase. DNA barcoding has many practical applications including furthering the study of taxonomy and monitoring biodiversity. In addition to these uses, DNA barcoding is a powerful tool to empower, engage, and educate students in the scientific method while conducting productive and creative research. The study presented here provides the first assessment of Marine Park (Brooklyn, New York, USA) biodiversity using DNA barcoding. New York City citizen scientists (high school students and their teachers) were trained to identify species using DNA barcoding during a two–week long institute. By performing NCBI GenBank BLAST searches, students taxonomically identified 187 samples (1 fungus, 70 animals and 116 plants) and also published 12 novel DNA barcodes on GenBank. Students also identified 7 ant species and demonstrated the potential of DNA barcoding for identification of this especially diverse group when coupled with traditional taxonomy using morphology. Here we outline how DNA barcoding allows citizen scientists to make preliminary taxonomic identifications and contribute to modern biodiversity research.

DNA barcoding for identification of fish species from freshwater in Enugu and Anambra States of Nigeria

“…DNA was extracted following the method of Marizzi et al (2018) with modifications. Briefly, a tissue (caudal fin or muscle) of 0.01 to 0.015 g was cut from each of the ethanolpreserved fish samples and transferred to a sterile 1.5 mL microcentrifuge with addition of 300 μL of lysis solution for homogenization using sterile mortar and pestle.…”

The Potential Role of School Citizen Science Programs in Infectious Disease Surveillance: A Critical Review

“…The DNA barcoding projects were primarily conducted by high school students in the United States and Australia whose results either generated new sequences of marine species to add to the database to assess biodiversity or confirmed the accuracy of marketplace seafood labelling. For the four studies, researchers noted high data quality and high student engagement, with the exception of the Marizzi et al study, which only recorded high data quality [ 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 ]. At the University of Oviedo in Spain, students produced many successful PCRs of DNA markers in seafood products in various classes in terms of data quality.…”

Building Back More Equitable STEM Education: Teach Science by Engaging Students in Doing Science

“…We invite the scientific community to consider what science, relevant to the field and/or the public, might be accomplished with the help of "massively parallel undergraduates," and the mutual benefits that can result. (Jordan et al, 2014;Hanauer et al, 2017;Staub et al, 2016), the Genomics Education Partnership (GEP) (Shaffer et al, 2010(Shaffer et al, , 2014Elgin et al, 2017), the Tiny Earth project (Hurley et al, 2021), DNA barcoding projects (Marizzi et al, 2018;Hyman et al, 2019), and others (see the Supplement) are designed to scale to multiple institutions and can engage large numbers of students. These projects have identified a central question where gathering multiple samples across the country, or otherwise pooling the efforts of large numbers of undergraduates, makes possible science that could not otherwise be done.…”

“…DNA barcoding and metabarcoding have been used as an end-to-end research program with 2,900 high school students from 176 schools in the New York metro area, reaching high numbers of historically excluded students. To date, these students have identified food fraud, tracked invasive species, conducted bio-inventories of local parks and published 160 DNA barcodes for species not previously represented in GenBank (Marizzi et al ., 2018).…”