Scientists collected DNA samples from a Brazilian rainforest as part of a global competition designed to aid the environment.
News — The challenge posed by organizers of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition to the international scientific community was formidable.
Devise a way to document the biodiversity within a remote Amazonian rainforest without stepping foot within, they said. Design a tent-size, portable laboratory that includes miniature versions of the advanced equipment necessary to conduct rapid genetic analysis, they added. And, finally, they said, complete the field work, analysis and written summary – efforts that normally would take months – in 72 hours.
A group of Rutgers scientists, led by ecologist , met this challenge and has been recognized internationally for stellar efforts. As part of the team led by Yale University, the researchers placed second in the global competition, according to an announcement by the . The nonprofit organization, which designs and manages public competitions to encourage technological developments, awarded the team $2 million out of a $10 million purse for its accomplishments.
“It was thrilling to be involved in the XPRIZE competition, continually innovating and improving mobile environmental DNA tools that we just didn’t dream were possible, even a year ago,” said , a Laboratory Researcher in Lockwood’s lab. “To see the tools we created being showcased to a panel of expert judges from around the world was intense at times, but also exciting. In the end, we demonstrated what a small team of motivated people can accomplish over a short amount of time.”
The prize money will go toward existing and future efforts to scale up and refine the biodiversity rapid assessment technologies the team created for the competition.
“Our goal here at Rutgers is to make our eDNA sampling tools accessible and affordable to users of a variety of technical backgrounds,” said Lockwood, Director of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute. “This will allow our approach to be used in generating meaningful and useful biodiversity information, even in the most remote corners of the globe.”
Rutgers scientists were invited by ecologist Walter Jetz of Yale to join the team and compete for the prize in the fall of 2023 because of their expertise in a technique known as environmental DNA, or eDNA, said Lockwood, who heads the
With eDNA, vestiges of DNA are collected from an environment – air, vegetation or water – and used to determine whether species are present in a given ecosystem. At the Rutgers lab, Lockwood and colleagues have pioneered the use of several new collection tools for forest environments.
“Walter saw the potential of our tools to transform what he and his team were doing for the competition, and for his efforts more broadly to rapidly catalog biodiversity from any forest, anywhere in the world,” said Lockwood, who also is a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources in the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “We saw this as the chance of a lifetime.”
The group traveled to Manaus, located on the banks of the Rio Negro in northwestern Brazil, in July 2024 for the challenge. They surveyed a 250-acre tropical rainforest outside the city. Using drones equipped with special eDNA devices they designed, they collected DNA samples from the air, water and tree canopies and amassed genetic evidence of hundreds of species in the allotted 24-hour period. Altogether, the Map of Life Rapid Assessment team identified 5,000 individual animals and plants from 225 species.
“They said, ‘Go!’ and then you fly your drones for 24 hours, and then you have 48 hours to develop what they called ‘insights,’” said Vastano, who led the development of the drone sample collection techniques and the design of the DNA analysis process. “After that, you basically process the data and then write a report. Our report was over 200 pages. The whole experience was phenomenal.”
The team conducted the DNA analysis in 90-degree heat in an unair-conditioned classroom, using fans to keep the electronic equipment cool. They were compelled to close the windows at night to keep the jungle insects out. The lab contained all the necessary elements, including pipettes, a centrifuge, a laptop computer and a small DNA sequencer. Once the DNA samples were processed, they were identified through a comparison with DNA sequences of thousands of species of insects, fish, animals and plants housed in a digital library. The bioinformatics specialists on the team created a computing workaround to accomplish this vast processing task, normally calculated over the course of days on supercomputers.
The competition was designed to incentivize novel, creative solutions to help preserve the diversity of life found within the world’s rainforests, which are threatened by deforestation and climate change.
“The challenges environmentalists face to do this includes documenting that species are present and where, and then following the fate of these species as local and global efforts progress toward saving rainforests,” Lockwood said. “One would think that simply observing species is not that hard, but most rainforest habitat is still very remote, and the sheer number of species present can overwhelm even the most intrepid biologist’s ability to record all that they see.”
Other Rutgers researchers on the team included Oliver Stringham, a research analyst with the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute; Michael Allen, now a research consultant with Tsuga Biodiversity Insights; Mariel Vandegrift, now a research technician at Cornell University; and Christopher Eddy, a laboratory researcher in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources.
Other collaborators on the team included scientists from Yale University, the Chicago Field Museum and the Universidade Federal Do Amazonas.
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