Scientific sleuths use CSI tactics to track down invaders

Capital News Service
LANSING — Great Lakes researchers from Notre Dame, Central Michigan and Michigan State universities are using new environmental DNA (eDNA) techniques to track down and control the spread of invasive species. Their techniques are like what you see on CSI television dramas where scientists analyze DNA left at the crime scene and use it to prosecute the culprits. Well, not quite. Fiction is faster, the scientists say. “What it does, though, is it makes you jealous of how they’re able to solve crimes in an hour, because it doesn’t happen that way,” said Christopher Jerde, a professor at Notre Dame, which is creating a basin-wide surveillance program.