Molecular identification for species diagnostics: from DNA Barcoding to Metabarcoding

The course is relevant for students belonging to the Master in Biology programme.

The course is available as a singular course.

The course is limited to 20 students.

Biodiversity loss, often referred to as biodiversity crisis, is a global environmental problem causing international concern and demanding urgent counteracting measures. Biodiversity is commonly defined in terms of a number of species present in a particular environment, or in total in the world. This makes species not only one of the fundamental biological concepts but also a focus of global conservation efforts. Currently morphology based species delimitation provides the baseline for conservation of most plant and animal groups. Development of molecular systematics and computational algorithms has been gradually bringing more and more genetic based approaches to characterizing species as evolutionary units, as compared to morphology based taxonomical units. The course focuses on high-throughput screening approaches of DNA sequence variation (i.e., DNA barcoding and Metabarcoding) for species identification and discovery that provide rapid assessments of biodiversity, animal diet assessment, reconstruction of paleo communities, among others. The course will consist of a series of lectures and bioinformatics practicals introducing different aspects of DNA metabarcoding. Bioinformatics practicals will introduce data analysis from raw sequences to taxonomic group assignment to enable basic ecological conclusion.

This course is organized with financial support from ForBio. Please see additional information available at: ForBio

Local admission, application code 9371 - Master's level singular course.

Admission requires a Bachelor`s degree (180 ECTS) or equivalent qualification, with a major in biology of minimum 80 ECTS.

After the course the students should have  Knowledge:

• You learn about DNA based molecular identification for species diagnostics: DNA Barcoding and Metabarcoding.

Skills:

• You acquire skills for analyses of raw sequence data: taxonomic assignment and phylogeny reconstruction for species identification and discovery.

General competence:

• You improve your analytical skills to use molecular tools for biodiversity assessment, animal diet assessment and reconstruction of paleo communities.

Language of instruction and examination

This module is open for exchange students with a bachelor degree in Biology.

Do you have questions about this module?  Please check the following website to contact the course coordinator for exchange students at the faculty: https://en.uit.no/education/art?p_document_id=510412

Written report (50%) and an oral presentation (50%).

A graded scale of five marks from A to E for pass and F for fail.

Re-sit exam:

There will be a re-sit examination for students that did not pass the previous ordinary examination.