Systematic review of marine environmental DNA metabarcoding studies: toward best practices for data usability and accessibility

PeerJ

article

Meghan M. Shea¹  Jacob Kuppermann²  Megan P. Rogers³  Dustin Summer Smith²  Paul Edwards⁴  Alexandria B. Boehm⁵ 

[1] Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment & Resources ,(E-IPER), Stanford University;Earth Systems Program, Stanford University;Program in Human Biology, Stanford University;Program in Science, Technology and Society, Stanford University;Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University

关键词: Environmental DNA;    Marine;    Systematic review;    FAIR data principles;    Metadata;    Data storage;    Metabarcoding;    Data usability;    Data accessibility;    Best practices;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.14993

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

The emerging field of environmental DNA (eDNA) research lacks universal guidelines for ensuring data produced are FAIR–findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable–despite growing awareness of the importance of such practices. In order to better understand these data usability challenges, we systematically reviewed 60 peer reviewed articles conducting a specific subset of eDNA research: metabarcoding studies in marine environments. For each article, we characterized approximately 90 features across several categories: general article attributes and topics, methodological choices, types of metadata included, and availability and storage of sequence data. Analyzing these characteristics, we identified several barriers to data accessibility, including a lack of common context and vocabulary across the articles, missing metadata, supplementary information limitations, and a concentration of both sample collection and analysis in the United States. While some of these barriers require significant effort to address, we also found many instances where small choices made by authors and journals could have an outsized influence on the discoverability and reusability of data. Promisingly, articles also showed consistency and creativity in data storage choices as well as a strong trend toward open access publishing. Our analysis underscores the need to think critically about data accessibility and usability as marine eDNA metabarcoding studies, and eDNA projects more broadly, continue to proliferate.

【 授权许可】

CC BY