PMEL's Ocean Molecular Ecology (OME) program uses 'Omics tools to tackle global ocean issues. We help lead the implementation of the NOAA 'Omics strategy and the White House's National Aquatic eDNA Strategy to advance NOAA's mission of science and stewardship. We seek to leverage advances in molecular biology to scale biological analyses with physical and chemical processes. Our science aims to characterize the impacts of warming, ocean acidification, and hypoxia on marine life. This allows for characterization of marine ecosystems as they respond to a changing climate.
OME work directly supports NOAA's core missions in numerous ways
- Understand and predict Earth systems by characterizing climate impacts on marine biodiversity.
- Develop technology to improve NOAA science, service, and stewardship by advancing 'Omics approaches.
- Transition results so they are useful to society - we do this by creating open access data dissemination, bioinformatic software, and genetic resources.
- Provide stewardship and maintain sustainability of the Nation's living marine resources, their habitats, interactions, and ecosystems by generating critical biodiversity information that is foundational for climate resilient ecosystem based fisheries management.
NOAA 'Omics Website
PMEL Ocean Molecular Ecology Technical Portal
NOAA 'Omics Technical Portal
What's Happening
Environmental DNA - or eDNA - is, simply put, DNA that can be found in the environment, such as soil, sediment, water, and air. Organisms are constantly shedding parts of themselves - such as dead skin, mucous, or waste - into their surroundings. The DNA in this shed organic matter, along with organismal DNA from microscopic organisms such as protists and bacteria, makes up eDNA. When a sample of water is collected, scientists can analyze the eDNA within it to determine what species are or were recently present in those waters, even if those species are not observed with the naked eye.
The use of eDNA is becoming increasingly popular across the world, including in the Northeast Pacific Ocean region. Approaches to collect and detect eDNA are now providing rapid, accurate, and cost-effective means of identifying marine organisms - from marine mammals to fish... more
Feature Publication
We created a guide to provide a framework for generating and disseminating voucher-based DNA reference barcode sequences. It provides a general step-by-step approach to collecting and processing specimens/vouchers, as well as generating and reporting the resulting nucleotide sequence data. We describe protocols for molecular lab work for generating both reference gene sequences (“barcodes”) as well as genome skimming to derive full mitogenomes and nuclear ribosomal repeat regions (“ultra-barcodes”). Our guiding principles include FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and... more