Development and validation of metabarcoding primers for the survey of Porifera and Cnidaria from the São Paulo coastal islands

• Grant number: 23/09317-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: August 01, 2023
• End date: November 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Oceanography - Biological Oceanography
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Rodrigues Domingues
• Grantee: Isabela Buxbaum Marinho Guerra
• Host Institution: Instituto Oceanográfico (IO). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 19/10201-0 - Marine biodiversity: an exploration of São Paulo coastal islands using environmental DNA metabarcoding, AP.BTA.JP
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/10997-7 - Validation of species-specific metabarcoding primers of marine habitat-forming species from São Paulo, Brazil, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

The comprehension of the ecosystems' biodiversity is fundamental to the understanding of biogeographic patterns and, in particular, to the development of strategies that analyze, prevent and contour ecological imbalances. Lately, this aspect has shown growing importance regard the marine environment, since the increase of anthropogenic activities and their influence in this environment has notably altered the number of species and individuals that inhabit certain regions. As as a result, fishing, irregular disposal of industrial waste, and introduction of non-indigenous species at the spot, destabilizes the harmonious ecological relations maintained between the different trophic levels that are present in the ecosystem. Therefore, molecular approaches are presented as a viable and efficient alternative for researching the biodiversity of the most diverse marine ecosystems. The metabarcoding technique is capable of identifying the variety of species of organisms that are present in a particular location through analyzing different genomic regions (e.g., 18S, 12S, COI) of the genetic material extracted from an environmental sample. However, one of the most influent aspects on the metabarcoding's efficiency is the utilization of primers that are specific to certain groups and capable of detecting as many species as possible, in order to reduce the detection of false positives and/or negatives that might directly affect the analysis' result. Thus, the current project intends to develop and validate primers for Porifera and Cnidaria species that occur in four coastal islands of the state of São Paulo (Buzios Island, Archipelago of Alcatrazes, Laje de Santos State Park and Queimada Grande Island), with the aim of promoting the understanding and the conservation of these groups' biodiversity in this area.