Ricerc@Sapienza

We are using the metabarcoding tecnique on sedimentary DNA (sedDNA) from three volcanic Italian lakes: Lago Grande di Monticchio, Lago di Nemi, and Lago di Martignano. At Monticchio, we have already identified over 100 plant taxa from a long sediment core covering the period from 1.4 to 30 thousand years before present. To maximize our results, we have developed new strategies to improve DNA extraction from mineral-adsorbed samples and counteract PCR inhibition. We are also testing hybdization capture and designed new probes to capture short DNA sequences belonging to multiple taxa using Next geneation sequencing.