Scientists have run the first proof of concept of their DNA ‘time machine’ to shed light on a century of environmental change in a freshwater lake—including warming temperatures and pollution, leading to the potentially irreversible loss of biodiversity.

Their approach, which uses AI applied to DNA-based biodiversity, climate variables and pollution, could help regulators to protect the planet’s existing biodiversity levels, or even improve them.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham, in collaboration with Goethe University in Frankfurt, used sediment from the bottom of a lake in Denmark to reconstruct a 100-year-old library of biodiversity, chemical pollution, and climate change levels. This lake has a history of well-documented shifts in water quality, making it a perfect natural experiment for testing the biodiversity time machine.

Publishing their findings in eLife, the experts reveal that the sediment holds a continuous record of biological and environmental signals that have changed over time—from (semi)pristine environments at the start of the industrial revolution to the present.

The team used environmental DNA—genetic material left behind by plants, animals, and bacteria—to build a picture of the entire freshwater community. Assisted by AI, they analyzed the information, in conjunction with climate and pollution data, to identify what could explain the historic loss of species that lived in the lake.

Principal investigator Luisa Orsini, Professor of Evolutionary Systems Biology and Environmental Omics at the University of Birmingham and Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, said, “We took a sediment core from the bottom of the lake and used biological data within that sediment