End of the road for illegal bushmeat trade in East Africa: Establishing transboundary surveillance by high resolution melting analysis of vertebrate molecular barcodes
icipe has recently developed cost-effective high resolution melting (HRM) analysis approaches for rapidly identifying diverse blood-meal host DNA sequences in blood-fed mosquitoes. This project is adapting this unique vertebrate DNA species identification approach to accelerate forensic sequence evidence pipelines required for the prosecution of wildlife/bushmeat traders and facilitate large-scale surveillance of potential wildlife products. We will also monitor changes in vector blood-feeding patterns before and after wildlife translocations, to identify their potential impacts on disease transmission.
Donor:
- USAID-PEER funding
Collaborators:
- Kenya Wildlife Service
- Tanzania National Parks
- National Museums of Kenya
- Smithsonian Institute