“In Stockholm today, five men are receiving Noble Prizes, the highest honors that international science has to offer for work that will eventually lead to the healing of sickness, and the preservation of human life.”
James Watson, with Francis Crick, discovered the “structure of life” in 1953. Sixty years later, DNA has gone well beyond that realm and become an important tool in understanding and conserving the world’s wildlife and ecologies.[break]
Here, 2013 will mark Nepal’s completion of its first genome project, the Nepal Tiger Genome Project (NTGP) conducted in a state-of-the-art laboratory in Kathmandu.
“We collected a lot more shit than planned,” Dibesh Karmacharya, who developed NTGP and is the International Director of Center for Molecular Dynamics-Nepal (CMDN), said lightheartedly of the project that identifies tigers and its habitat based on the DNA information retrieved from tiger feces. After 216 days of collecting 1,200 samples of scat (the term used for feces of carnivores) from four national parks by multiple teams, the two-year project funded by USAID-Nepal comes to a close in June. But the crucial chapter of genetic study of wildlife in Nepal is only beginning.
Photo Courtesy: Kashish Das Shresth
“USAID set up the NTGP as a two-year project to build capacity in Nepal to do cutting-edge genetic research to inform wildlife conservation,” Bronwyn Llewellyn, Environment Officer, USAID Nepal, explained. “We considered this important because Nepal has a long history of traditional conservation and is ready to bring their efforts to the next level through advanced technology such as genetics.”
Nepal Tiger Genome Project
Nepal is by no means the first country to use DNA to study wildlife. India began its first DNA-based enumerations of tigers in 2007, and the San Diego Zoo Global Genome 10K Project is aiming to “assemble a genetic zoo” with a “collection of DNA sequences of 100,000 species” by 2015.
Nepal, however, does not allow any biological samples to be taken out of the country. And this is what makes the current genetics studies in Nepal groundbreaking: simply the fact that these studies can finally be done here in Nepal itself, at the CMDN, established in 2007 as a non-profit-making non-government organization. In their 2011 preliminary study of snow leopards for WWF, CMDN worked to identify species and gender based on samples originally collected in late 2000s by WWF’s field biologists for a dietary survey.
With the Tiger Genome Project, initiated in collaboration with the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, and funded by USAID Nepal, CMDN is able to add the final crucial element: fingerprinting of the species identified; in this case, creating a unique ID for individual species that have been identified as a male or female [Royal Bengal] tiger.
“We’re only creating a database of 700 samples, which is what the resources of the project allows us to do,” Dibesh explains.
The DNA extraction takes three days, species identification then takes about a week, gender identification takes about three to four days, and finally another three days for “fingerprinting” the sample, i.e., creating a unique ID of that particular tiger. The team is currently establishing 10 DNA markers on each sample.
Through NTGP, CMDN has also developed a customized software in which each sample’s details are carefully cataloged, accessible instantly by scanning a barcode.
Indeed, the NTGP offers a long-term capacity for Nepal even after the project ends. The DNA Sequencer, which the USAID-funded project of little over $268,000 helped pay for, enables this local service provider to do what could not be done in Nepal before. That is to say, a technology brought in for tigers will serve many in the days to come, and already is. CMDN is also now working with several international researchers, mostly university researchers, who are not able to take their samples out of Nepal.
“We’re extremely proud of what CMDN has accomplished in this timeframe. By setting up a lab with this capability, USAID has opened the door for more research as well,” Bronwyn added. “Other donors and projects are now coming to CMDN to work on everything from Rhinos to Snow Leopards. Nepal is becoming known as a leader in the region on genetics research, and we are confident that this ability is going to continue to grow.”
Stanford University’s study
Last week, at an environment-reporting workshop organized by the USAID-funded Hariyo Ban program, Secretary for the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation spoke about Nepal’s potential as an international research site. [Disclosure: the writer was moderating the workshop]
The current emphasis on studying climate change and considering Nepal’s unique topography and ecology, the country is a hub for global research, the Secretary explained.
One such researcher is Professor Elizabeth Hadly of Stanford University and her team. She is currently researching the impact of climate change on the Himalayan Pikas.
“We could not have done the work without the collaboration of Dibesh and his team,” Prof. Hadly said over email.
Describing her team’s research, Prof Hadly wrote, “Pikas cannot tolerate heat. And the climate in high elevation tropical areas such as Nepal and northern India is changing at a faster rate than other areas of the world. Our team is working on pikas in the Himalaya of Nepal and India for the main reason that they are very speciose there and because the species span a variety of elevations.”
What is the genetics connection?
“Not only have pikas never been studied genetically in Nepal, we aren´t really sure exactly how many species are present in your country!” she added.
Another exciting development is a study by Uma Ramakrishnan, Prof. Hadly’s collaborator in India, and Nishma Dal, Uma´s grad student, who have revealed that “there is at least one species in the Himalayas that has never been identified before.”
The CMDN team itself is excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. As they wrap up the NTGP, they are already looking at ways in which to add more value to the data they have gathered and documented, namely, by using elements of GIS and Landsat images to get a broader scope of not just the tigers, but the way in which their population and human population has interacted over a certain period of time, and how they might move forward. It is the logical step forward that needs to be taken sooner rather than later.
“I am interested in how animals respond to climate change,” Prof. Hadly said of her research. “I work in the past, using fossils I excavate from the last 20,000 years or so, to the present, using extant animals I live-trap in the wild, in order to understand how animals will react to our world of the future.”
Nepal is considered to be the 13th most climate-vulnerable country in the world. In a race against a rapidly changing climate, heightened domestic deforestation and forest encroachments, illegal mining, and a bustling illicit wildlife parts trade, there has never been a more crucial time for Nepal to prepare for its world of the future.
Additional references:
01: Nepal Tiger Genome Project: NTGP.org.np
02: Center for Molecular Dynamics-Nepal: CMDN.org.np
03: Stanford University’s Hadly Lab: http://www.stanford.edu/group/hadlylab/
Next week, the second part of this report will look into how DNA research is already helping Nepal’s conservation efforts, law enforcement agencies, and the potential this field holds for the country and international research. ~
kashish@350nepal.or
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