Marine mammals are threatened and environmental DNA is a promising tool that can strengthen marine mammal monitoring. The goal of this thesis is to explore and test genetic methods on marine samples. Oxford nanopore technologies (ONT) sequencing is a new method that is one of few that can sequence ultra long DNA reads. Therefore, the primers MarVer1 and MarVer3 were combined to make MarVerXL (2,2 kbp). An experiment was executed, composed of 3 mock communities to test the affinity and sensitivity of MarVerXL Two different types of environmental samples were also analysed in this study to test the MarVer primers and sampling success, one type from the blow of a humpback whale and one from filtered water at a greater distance from any individual.
MarVer3 and MarVerXL has poor affinity for delphinid species but further testing is needed to conclude the extent. Marver 1 and Marver 3 amplified DNA sufficiently in all relevant environmental samples. MarVerXL only amplified target DNA in the experiment and the blowhole sample, indicating that the size of the segment is to long if the DNA is too degraded, and further testing would be needed to detect the limit of primer product length vs. DNA degradation.
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