On 21st June, Veronika Andriienko has successfully defended her thesis, "High-throughput insect barcoding in microbiome studies: impact of non-destructive DNA extraction on microbiome composition", and obtained her M.Sc. degree! Congratulations!

Barcoding is a powerful technique of insect biodiversity surveying, rapidly gaining popularity due to low costs and high throughput - but we did not know how the process of barcoding affects microbiome profile. Veronika has assessed microbial community composition of insects that have been pre-barcoded following high-throughput protocols implemented by leading biodiversity labs. She concluded that the "HotShot" DNA extraction treatment used during the barcoding process decreases the overall DNA concentration, but does not change its composition.

These results are key to microbiome surveying efforts at the scale of natural communities, like those that our lab is implementing. We now know we can cheaply barcode very large numbers of insects, and later use barcode information to only select some for microbiome characterization!

Congratulations, Veronika!!!


Added: 24st June 2023