For hundreds of years of Loch Ness in Scotland seemed never out of the conversation. It is said there are monsters that live there, long-necked and has a hump, a swim in the calm lake.
Fairy tales handed down even this eventually intriguing. Not a few who believe that this creature exists and is a prehistoric creature that remains. While others just consider the Loch Ness monster is no more as a bedtime story.
Now an international team plans to conduct a research on Loch Ness lake. The joint teams from England, Denmark, the United States, Australia and France plan to dive on the Loch Ness lake. They will take a sampling of environmental DNA (eDNA) and make a list of every living thing in Loch Ness. The results of eDNA sampling will then be compared with other lakes in the Scottish highlands.
"Every time a creature moves through its environment, it leaves a small piece of DNA from the skin, scales, feathers, feces and urine," said Neil Gemmell, lead researcher and lead author of this study. "DNA can be recorded, sequenced and then used to identify living things by comparing data from 100,000 organisms that are already known to their genetic sequence.If there is no match, we can generally know where the appropriate family tree is," he added as quoted by Science Alert , Wednesday (5/23/2018).
Although Gemmel, who is also a geneticist and professor at the University of Otago, he doubted this creature existence, his team would still try to find DNA evidence, but keep an open mind.
This research is actually not just looking for the existence of this mythical monsters. This study aims to reveal the uniqueness of Loch Ness ecosystem. "Loch Ness monster is one to connecting things in this study, but there is a huge amount of new knowledge we can get about what kind organisms inhabit in Loch Ness," Gemmel said.
He also hopes to find new species in this waters, especially new bacteria. The study could also explain how far invasive species such as Pacific pink salmon have disrupted lake ecosystems. The international team also hopes that this study can show how science works.
"We have the opportunity through this project to demonstrate the scientific process, how hypotheses are made and then tested, replicate, control, and take into account observational bias using a double-blind method. This is all an important part of this study," if Loch Ness monster really is out there, it will not be able to hide from us any longer" he said
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