- Webinar Speakers
Dr. Satoshi Nagai
Group Leader, National Research Institute of Fisheries Science,
Fisheries Research and Education Agency (Japan)After Dr. Nagai’s graduation at National Fisheries University, he worked at the Fisheries Research Institute of Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. He then received his PhD for the study of life cycle and ecology in a giant marine diatom at Kyoto University. Following that, Dr. Nagai moved to the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency. Since then he has studied the molecular detection of harmful algal bloom causative species, population genetics and environmental DNAs. He has ten years of research experience for eukaryote metabarcoding using next-generation sequencing in Japanese coastal waters. Recently, the study area has more expanded worldwide with international collaborations in Asian and Chilean coastal waters, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
- Webinar Abstract
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have made it possible to obtain millions of sequence reads in a single experiment, and massively parallel sequencing (MPS) is currently revolutionizing survey of environmental DNA (eDNA), because this technology enables us to detect several hundreds of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) of bacteria and eukaryotes from aquatic environmental samples and facilitates the detection of low-abundance populations from complex communities.
The significant advantage of applying metabarcoding technology for monitoring biodiversity is the great potential for more precise species identification based on genetic information, especially species that are indistinguishable by the conventional morphology-based microscopic observation. In the recent 10 years, we have had research projects to evaluate eukaryotic biodiversity utilizing metabarcoding techniques among different marine ecosystems, i.e. sea ice, aquaculture and fish grounds, coral reef, macroalgal seedbed ecosystems from the northernmost to the southernmost area of Japan (from coastal waters to offshore and deep sea). We have collected >5,000 eDNA samples and accumulated the information on bacteria, fungi, microalgae, protists, zooplankton distribution and appearances. We believe that this study can enhance our comprehensive understanding of primary productivity and marine micro food webs.
In this seminar, Dr. Nagai would be introducing the interesting results of eukaryote metabarcoding carried out mainly in Japanese coastal waters.
Please click here if you would like to attend an Japanese version of this webinar