Environmental DNA – It’s All Up in the Air

Steven J. Madore, PhD (ICBR Associate Director for Science)

(Note: this article has been summarized from UF News “Environmental DNA floating in the air tracks wildlife, viruses — even drugs” June 3, 2025 by Eric Hamilton)

Scientists can now use the power of genetic information to identify biodiversity by sampling environmental DNA or eDNA.

“The level of information that’s available in environmental DNA is such that we’re only starting to consider what the potential applications can be, from humans to wildlife to other species that have implications for human health,” said David Duffy, Ph.D., professor of wildlife disease genomics at the UF Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience

A leader in the field, Dr. Duffy has developed new methods for deciphering eDNA, to study sea turtle genetics. They’ve expanded the tools to study every species — including humans — from DNA captured in environmental samples like water, soil and sand.

While eDNA can be abundantly found in environments like muddy soil or ocean water, air itself can also contain this genetic fingerprint.  In fact, filtering air for hours, days or weeks can capture the specific DNA from nearly every species that grows or wanders nearby.

“When we started, it seemed like it would be hard to get intact large fragments of DNA from the air. But that’s not the case. We’re actually finding a lot of informative DNA,” Duffy said. “That means you can study species without directly having to disturb them, without ever having to see them. It opens up huge possibilities to study all the species in an area simultaneously, from microbes and viruses all the way up to vertebrates like bobcats and humans, and everything in between.”

A recent study from Dr. Duffy’s laboratory published in the June 3 issue of the high impact journal Nature Ecology & Evolution reveals the power of studying environmental DNA, vacuumed up from the air, which can track everything from elusive bobcats to illicit drugs.

Designed as a proof-of-concept study, and with technical support from the UF ICBR Gene Expression and Genotyping and Next Generation Sequencing Shared Resources, Dr.  Duffy’s group showed that they could detect genomic DNA from hundreds of different human pathogens (including viruses and bacteria) from environmental air sampled in Dublin, Ireland. Such an approach of sampling air for eDNA could help scientists track emerging diseases as well the amounts of common allergens, like peanut or pollen, much more precisely than is currently possible.

The team demonstrated that a single researcher could process DNA for every species in as little as a day using compact, affordable equipment, and software hosted in the cloud. This quick turnaround is significantly faster than methods used just a few years ago and opens up the capability of performing environmental studies to more scientists around the world.

“It seems like science fiction, but it’s becoming science fact,” Duffy said. “The technology is finally matching the scale of environmental problems.”