As the Ocean Molecular Ecology (OME) group works to make our science and lab practices open and accessible, we have prioritized standardizing and sharing our environmental DNA sample collection and processing protocols to a public repository. The Better Biomolecular Ocean Practices (BeBOP), a U.N. Decade Endorsed project under Ocean Biomolecular Observing Network (OBON), pioneered a Minimum Information about an Omics Protocol (MIOP) format to better compare practices and integrate data generated when studying ocean life. BeBOP formatted protocols are accessible, detailed, traceable, machine-readable, and standardized. Importantly, they are designed to provide the reader with all the information needed to replicate a protocol from supplies purchasing and troubleshooting to the method background and a step-by-step procedure.
In the last four years, OME has collected over 2,800 eDNA samples from coastal stations off the western coast of North America in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea, and Arctic Ocean. Since 2023, we’ve extracted over 1,200 samples and sequenced/processed over a thousand. As we pushed through our backlog, we fine-tuned our standard operating procedures for all in-house lab work, including eDNA collection, extraction, and PCR amplification. Our published protocols are written for reproducibility so a new lab could replicate our efforts. We aim to continue our efforts to encompass all field and lab protocols performed by OME over the next year. These protocols are archived, version-controlled, and citable in Zenodo repositories.