Metabarcoding and environmental sequencing projects

The thesis explores the use of metabarcoding in projects uncovering biological diversity and its applications in various fields of biology. The thesis provides an overview of the principles and workflow of metabarcoding, including the choice of specific molecular markers for various groups of organisms and the bioinformatics aspect of data analysis. Limitations of metabarcoding, such as lack of standardization, primer bias and targeting metabolically inactive organisms are discussed along with potential strategies for overcoming these obstacles. The practical application of metabarcoding is demonstrated on examples of its use in sequencing projects, such as Human Microbiome Project or TARA Oceans expedition. The potential of using metabarcoding for research purposes is discussed from the perspective of paleontology, diet analysis, and conservation biology. Overall, this work aims to assess the potential of metabarcoding as a powerful tool and could serve as an initial guidance for researchers interested in utilizing metabarcoding for their scientific investigations. Keywords: metabarcoding, eDNA, molecular markers, NGS, bioinformatics, biodiversity