DNA-based solutions to paleoenvironmental research: Current and foreseeable applications of DNA techniques for the Holocene Black Sea.

Abstract

Paleogenomics, which makes use of the genetic fingerprint of species that lived in a past environment, proved to be a powerful method for retrieving highly detailed taxonomical information from Holocene marine sediment records. This technique has been successfully applied on Holocene Black Sea samples, as the DNA remains preserved under anoxic conditions. This report shows that paleogenomic reconstructions for the diatom, dinoflagellate and haptophyte community improved sea surface temperature and salinity reconstructions. With Next Generation Sequencing techniques (NGS) paleogenomics is becoming more accurate and cheaper, by which new applications emerge for this field of science. Currently, a full eukaryotic reconstruction, in which multiple taxonomical classes are studied with one integrated method, gave new insights on early anthropogenic activity in the Black Sea catchment area. In the future NGS can be used in single cell experiments in which genetic and morphological information can be directly linked. Also studying functional genes, which indicate a specific activity associated to environmental conditions, could possibly give new insights on past environments.