PORTABLE DNA BARCODING FOR WILDLIFE IDENTIFICATION

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WEP is innovating with new breakthrough technology!

 

THE NEED - 

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need to curb dangerous contact between humans and unsafe animal products. All around the world, tons of unregulated wildmeat (also known as "bushmeat) are taken from the wild for human consumption. In addition, much of this unregulated use of wildlife endangers protected species, such as elephants, rhinos, antelopes and apes.

 

Governments and major international agencies such as the UN, INTERPOL, World Bank and others are investing heavily -

 a) to prevent disease and to fight wildlife crime - Quick and accurate identification of confiscated animal products is not yet available. To prevent a new zoonosis (animal disease that is transferred to humans), and to combat wildlife crime, DNA identification must currently be done at a forensic laboratory, far from the rangers' frontlines and border checks;

 

b) for food security- Accurate and quick wildlife identification is important to discover mislabeled meat and to fight "fish fraud" along the food supply chain;

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 c) for religious security – There is currently no quick and accurate test to find unacceptable animals in processed food, such as pork for Halal standards for Muslims, or Kosher laws for Jews.

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THE TECHNOLOGY  -

DNA barcoding is a new technique (first described in 2003), for identification of animal and plant species from an unknown sample, by comparing part of the sample's DNA to known DNA sequences.  Currently, identification takes 2-3 days in an academic laboratory.

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We are creating an inovative, fully portable and self-contained "laboratory in a briefcase" for customs officials and wildlife rangers that will use DNA barcoding to identify wildlife samples on-site in about 1 hour.

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At the same time, our portable lab will test the sample simultaneously for all known DNA-based diseases.

 

Our private database of DNA barcodes is a product of our unique bioinformatic algorithms which can differentiate between closely related species as well as between wild vs. domestic varieties of the same species, which no other barcoding laboratory in the world can do.

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