Wanted dead or alive? Using metabarcoding of environmental DNA and RNA to distinguish living assemblages for biosecurity applications

Abstract

High-throughput sequencing metabarcoding studies in marine biosecurity have largely focused on targeting environmental DNA (eDNA). DNA can persist extracellularly in the environment, making discrimination of living organisms difficult. In this study, bilge water samples (i.e., water accumulating on-board a vessel during transit) were collected from 15 small recreational and commercial vessels. eDNA and eRNA molecules were co-extracted and the V4 region of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene targeted for metabarcoding. In total, 62.7% of the Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) were identified at least once in the corresponding eDNA and eRNA reads, with 19.5% unique to eDNA and 17.7% to eRNA. There were substantial differences in diversity between molecular compartments; 57% of sequences from eDNA-only OTUs belonged to fungi, likely originating from legacy DNA. In contrast, there was a higher percentage of metazoan (50.2%) and ciliate (31.7%) sequences in the eRNA-only OTUs. Our data suggest that the presence of eRNA-only OTUs could be due to increased cellular activities of some rare taxa that were not identified in the eDNA datasets, unusually high numbers of rRNA transcripts in ciliates, and/or artefacts produced during the reverse transcriptase, PCR and sequencing steps. The proportions of eDNA/eRNA shared and unshared OTUs were highly heterogeneous within individual bilge water samples. Multiple factors including boat type and the activities performed on-board, such as washing of scientific equipment, may play a major role in contributing to this variability. For some marine biosecurity applications analysis, eDNA-only data may be sufficient, however there are an increasing number of instances where distinguishing the living portion of a community is essential. For these circumstances, we suggest only including OTUs that are present in both eDNA and eRNA data. OTUs found only in the eRNA data need to be interpreted with caution until further research provides conclusive evidence for their origin.

Fig 1. Venn diagrams showing the percentage of DNA-only, shared eDNA/eRNA and RNA-only Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in all samples, as well as in samples from yachts and motorboats.

Numbers in brackets correspond to the number of OTUs in each group.

Fig 2. Global biodiversity of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) for the DNA-only, shared eDNA/eRNA, and RNA-only datasets.

The charts show the relative abundance of sequences at highest assigned taxonomic levels.

Fig 3. Venn diagrams showing the percentage of DNA-only, shared eDNA/eRNA, and RNA-only Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in individual pairs of eDNA and eRNA samples.

Numbers in brackets correspond to the number of OTUs in each group. Samples from either yachts (Y) or motorboats (MB) are indicated.

Fig 4. Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (nMDS) plot analyses.

Plots are constructed using Jaccard similarity matrices from; (A) presence-absence of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTU)-based diversity between the global eDNA and eRNA datasets collected on yachts versus motorboats, and (B) taxonomic composition (presence-absence) based on OTU data aggregated at Phylum-level, split into eDNA-only, eDNA/eRNA-shared, and eRNA-only for samples from yachts and motorboats. Sample numbers are indicated in parentheses (refer to Table 1).

Fig 5. Sequence reads proportions of the <10 most abundant Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) in the eDNA-only, eDNA-shared, eRNA-shared, and eRNA-only portions of (A) sample 9, (B) sample 6, and (C) sample 4.