The Prince of Wales enjoyed the “best day of my life” when he was encouraged to spray pond water at the press – all in the name of science. William aimed a syringe full of the cloudy water at journalists when he joined school children collecting DNA samples for NatureMetrics, a finalist in his environmental Earthshot Prize awards project. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:003, 2, 1, go!
00:02Yes!
00:04Brilliant!
00:24Morning everyone!
00:26I'm going to introduce you to our founder.
00:28Good morning!
00:30Lovely to see you again!
00:32Welcome!
00:36I think we're going to all try
00:38and take an eDNA sample
00:40together.
00:42These are our experts.
00:44We're going to walk through it all together.
00:50We're going to put gloves on.
00:52Why are gloves important guys?
00:56Before we end up finding tuna
00:58in our DNA sample.
01:00This has happened in real life and we've had to go back
01:02and find out what people ate for lunch.
01:08Nice to see you.
01:10I gather you're a science teacher?
01:12Science technician.
01:14These guys are giving you the technical one.
01:16You can actually break it down and make it simple.
01:18So you can understand the process.
01:20Absolutely.
01:22You need a syringe as well.
01:28Try and fill it
01:30all the way up to the top.
01:32Almost all the way.
01:34There we go.
01:36So you get a bit more power.
01:38If you've got a big air bubble in your syringe
01:40before you put your filter on
01:44just hold the syringe up
01:46and push the air bubble out.
01:52Three, two, one.
01:58We can leave these ones here.
02:02Three, go.
02:04Yes.
02:06Brilliant.
02:08Trust me.
02:14Thank you for that.
02:16Fantastic.
02:18Come along and remember to stop.
02:22Yes.
02:34Syringes.
02:36To your left-hand side.
02:40No pressure.
02:52It's a big hill.
02:54It's like going up by a bridge.
02:56It's amazing.
02:58It's like a whirlwind.
03:00Yes.
03:06It's also easy to take your
03:08sunbeams and your soil films
03:10so you can choose the sample
03:12for the grouping that you want to
03:14have more information about.
03:16That region over there is unique to a species
03:18and that's what we sequence.
03:20This is our post-PCR.
03:22Good morning, everyone.
03:24This is the cheery lot.
03:26The others were very serious,
03:28very hard at work.
03:30These guys are just a bit cheery.
03:32She's doing like seven or eight in one go.
03:34Yes, she does.
03:36She's got an eight-channel multipurpose.
03:38I did one.
03:40I was only allowed one channel.
03:42You can now buy one with 96 tips on it.
03:44We've got some robots on the right
03:46so we can automate parts of the process
03:48and it saves so you can do
03:50probably the work of four people
03:52in half the time with those robots.
03:54We're graduating.
03:56The final stage is to sequence
03:58the DNA from the cell.
04:02To be able to see the sequencing machines
04:04at the end and spinning them and sticking them
04:06on the machines that are like printers
04:08and then magic happens.
04:10I did this in the Oxford Nanopore people.
04:12That's obviously a little bit faster, isn't it?
04:14Yes, that's the newer technology.
04:16The cost crash of sequencing
04:18has just opened up our world.
04:22This is the sequencing machine.
04:24Basically a text file
04:26with 30 million lines
04:28of A's, T's, C's and D's
04:30which obviously doesn't mean
04:32anything to anyone.
04:34Then there's the real magic bit
04:36that happens in the data processing.
04:38It takes these sequences and matches them
04:40against the known sequences
04:42for different species.
04:44Is each one of those lines
04:46an individual species?
04:48It's an individual DNA molecule.
04:50It takes these sequences and matches them
04:52against the known sequences for different species.
04:54Is each one of those lines
04:56an individual species?
04:58It's an individual DNA molecule.
05:00This one's got lots of lessons
05:02versus that one.
05:04Great question.
05:06When they come off the sequencer
05:08there's just a lot of natural variation
05:10in the way each strand is sequenced.
05:12The first thing that happens
05:14in the pipeline is the same length
05:16to exactly the same region of DNA.
05:18Then you can line them all up and process them
05:20together.
05:22We've got a team of absolutely brilliant people
05:24who do that.
05:26Monitored ponds in the world
05:28because we use them for all our R&D.
05:30This platform,
05:32the first thing is to try and bring it to life
05:34so we can see what we've found.
05:36Smooth newt is found in the pond?
05:38Smooth newt is found in the pond, yes.
05:40Is that quite a common newt?
05:42It's more common than the Great Crested Newt
05:44which is the more protected one.
05:46They're just such cool animals
05:48you don't see them very often.
05:50They're vulnerable aren't they?
05:52They have their habitat quite right for them.
05:54Yes, they're generally quite different
05:56in a completely different way.
06:00Out of interest, your DNA bank,
06:02how did you come about that?
06:04Presumably that must be evolving the whole time
06:06as we learn more new species and all sorts.
06:08All the time.
06:10We mostly use publicly available reference databases
06:12so basically any time anyone does research
06:14and sequences DNA, when they publish it
06:16they have to submit their sequences
06:18to a public bank.
06:20Basically everything gets a good species match.
06:22If you're working on
06:24freshwater fish in West Africa
06:26only say 25% of those
06:28will get a species name
06:30but you'll still have all of the other
06:32species and it will just say
06:34this is a species in this family of fish.
06:36If you stay home we've got both
06:38soil and wood kits in there as well.
06:40Excellent.
06:42Now you've shown me how to do it, I can show you how to do it.
06:44Give them a go.
06:46Hopefully the practice today has helped.
06:48I'll let you know what I find.
07:00We've talked just about a couple of my science knowledge
07:02that I had before I walked in the door.
07:04It was very impressive.
07:06It was a very lovely school trip.
07:08We were equally as excited
07:10and willing to get involved in it all.
07:12I heard you nearly got squirted.
07:14Not me.
07:16Some of you know this better than I do
07:18already.
07:20This is new to me from Earthshot.
07:22So it's been really interesting.
07:24John, you've invested in it already.
07:26We have indeed.
07:28How has that come about?
07:30What have you seen that you particularly like?
07:32For us,
07:34we invest,
07:36just as the name suggests,
07:38we invest in just climate.
07:40We also concluded very quickly that we couldn't
07:42invest in climate if we weren't
07:44also solving the nature crisis.
07:46So finding and creating
07:48a business to invest in that.
07:50As we look around for the tools
07:52and the technologies that we're going
07:54to enable for land and
07:56agriculture to transition.
07:58What particularly do you see about it that you think is of use?
08:00Is it getting a database?
08:02Is it understanding more data around
08:04certain areas that helps inform
08:06our decision making?
08:08I think getting the data is going to be the core.
08:10But as you probably saw
08:12tomorrow, the ease and the ability
08:14to roll this out.