CRISPR-based biosurveillance is an emerging platform that is portable, highly sensitive, specific, and cost-effective. It infers the presence of organisms and agents from environmental nucleic acids. Applications of these environmental fingerprints range from pathogen detection to monitoring invasive and endangered species across a range of environments, from water, air and soil. However, current challenges and limitations require technological advancements if CRISPR is to be deployed for novel targets and environmental sources. This review synthesises new developments across converging CRISPR fields, spanning computational sciences, synthetic biology and biosurveillance. Innovative, promising ideas are highlighted while gap opportunities are mapped for the research community. We outline a strategic roadmap for advancing CRISPR-eBx as a next-generation biosurveillance solution.

Marine sponges have recently emerged as efficient natural environmental DNA (eDNA) samplers. The ability of sponges to accumulate eDNA provides an exciting opportunity to reconstruct contemporary communities and ecosystems with high temporal and spatial precision. However, the use of historical eDNA (heDNA), trapped within the vast number of specimens stored in scientific collections, opens up the opportunity to begin to reconstruct the communities and ecosystems of the past. Here, using a variety of Antarctic sponge specimens stored in an extensive marine invertebrate collection, we were able to recover information on Antarctic fish biodiversity from specimens up to 20 years old. We successfully recovered 64 fish heDNA signals from 27 sponge specimens. Alpha diversity measures did not differ among preservation methods, but sponges stored frozen had a significantly different fish community composition compared to those stored dry or in ethanol. Our results show that we were consistently and reliably able to extract the heDNA trapped within marine sponge specimens, thereby enabling the reconstruction and investigation of communities and ecosystems of the recent past with a spatial and temporal resolution previously unattainable. Future research into heDNA extraction from other preservation methods, as well as the impact of specimen age and collection method will strengthen and expand the opportunities for this novel resource to access new knowledge on ecological change during the last century.