Validation of species-specific metabarcoding primers of marine habitat-forming species from São Paulo, Brazil

• Grant number: 24/10997-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: February 28, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Oceanography - Biological Oceanography
• Principal Investigator: Rodrigo Rodrigues Domingues
• Grantee: Isabela Buxbaum Marinho Guerra
• Supervisor: Matthieu Leray
• Host Institution: Instituto Oceanográfico (IO). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Smithsonian Institution, Panamá, Panama
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/09317-9 - Development and validation of metabarcoding primers for the survey of Porifera and Cnidaria from the São Paulo coastal islands, BP.IC

Abstract

The comprehension of an ecosystem's biodiversity is fundamental to the understanding of biogeographic patterns and, in particular, to the development of strategies that analyze, prevent, and counteract ecological imbalances. Lately, this aspect has demonstrated growing importance regarding the marine environment since the increase of anthropogenic activities and their influence in this environment has notably altered the species composition and distribution of certain regions, as a result, for instance, of excessive fishing, irregular disposal of industrial waste and the introduction of non-indigenous species, which destabilizes the harmonious ecological relations maintained between the different trophic levels that are present in the ecosystem. Therefore, molecular methods of biota analysis are presented as a viable and efficient alternative for researching the biodiversity of 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 influential aspects on the metabarcoding's efficiency is the utilization of specific primers that are directed to certain groups and that are capable of detecting as many target 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 species-specific primers for porifera and cnidaria, with the aim of promoting the ecological understandment and the conservation of these groups' biodiversity in the marine environment.