The latest entry in a mystery series by York University alum Steve Burrows features the cutting-edge environmental DNA (eDNA) science of York professor Elizabeth Clare – with a twist.
Burrows wasn’t sure he would hear back from Clare, a York University professor whose pioneering work in eDNA has gained international attention. Clare leads the Clare Lab at York that collects DNA traces from air, water, and soil, helping scientists monitor wildlife in new, non-invasive ways.
An alum of York’s English literature program in the 1970s, Burrows has become the author of the “Birder Murder” mystery series, which follows detective Domenic Jejeune as he solves crimes while pursuing his passion for birdwatching. Each book carries a strong environmental theme grounded in topical, cutting-edge science, with a U.K. or Canadian focus.
While researching his latest novel, A Deceit of Lapwings, Burrows came across a BBC article about Clare’s work. He learned that her team captures tiny traces of DNA left by animals and plants, allowing them to study wildlife without disturbing it. They find this DNA in water, soils, trapped in the gut of a leech, but they are most famous for discovering it travels in the air. Her work has expanded the environments where this method can be used and made monitoring biodiversity at the scale of an entire country a reality.
Burrows also discovered that Clare is a professor at his alma mater and decided to reach out, even though he doubted he would get a reply quickly given the attention her work has received. “I thought, ‘I'm going to be pretty low on the pecking order,’” he says.
In one sense, he wasn’t wrong. Since publishing the 2021 study "EDNAir: Proof of Concept That Animal DNA Can Be Collected from Air Sampling," which demonstrated for the first time that eDNA could be collected from the air to identify mammalian species, and a dozen more publications since, Clare has fielded frequent questions from scientists, government, law enforcement, and the public.
Fortunately for Burrows, Clare replied immediately, eager to discuss her work. The two agreed to meet on campus, with Burrows struck by how much the university had changed. Clare came prepared to potentially disappoint him, suspecting he might want to know whether eDNA could identify a murderer through DNA in the air. “The answer is ‘No’. There is no plausible way of doing that right now,” she says.
Burrows was ready. He had realized he might be able to use eDNA in a fictional context to help his detective uncover clues, even if it couldn’t work in real life. As Clare explained her work in more detail, they realized the murder might not be detectable, but there was an idea that could be feasible: collecting DNA from the birds that his stories feature. Over the following weeks, Burrows consulted her, sharing questions and checking whether plot points rooted in her science were possible. The more he did so, the more he realized he needed a character in his novel to serve as a scientific consultant for his detective and, by extension, his readers.
He had an inventive solution. He asked Clare if he could make her a character in his book, and she immediately agreed. It’s a rare distinction in Burrows’ novels. “I've spoken on a number of occasions to people who are experts in their fields, and certainly given my characters some of their wisdom to impart, but I've never actually needed to have a character that was based on an actual consultant. This was a first for me,” Burrows says.
Clare ended up perhaps inspiring two characters. One is a ground researcher performing the air sampling. The second, a proxy of Clare herself named Libby Leclair, serves as a world-leading expert in Toronto who guides the detective. The name pays tribute to Clare’s aunt Lib who was a beloved, outgoing and eccentric kindergarten teacher.
For Clare, the collaboration marks another milestone in the technology pioneered by her and Joanne Littlefair, a biologist at University College London. The breakthrough grew out of something Clare had written about while preparing an advisory document for a branch of the UK government. She described using DNA from air, assuming it was already being done as it was with water and soil. Upon further research, she realized no one had successfully applied the method, except for a science fair project by two Japanese students, leaving the approach largely untested. This led her to test the concept herself, and with funding support for high-risk, high-reward projects, she developed a technique to capture DNA from the air, opening new possibilities for wildlife monitoring and environmental research.
“I wanted to vacuum the sky, and it turns out it works,” she jokes. “Four years ago, no one ever heard of this. We've gone from an entirely insane idea in a lab to it being incorporated into popular entertainment.”
By featuring both Clare’s character and the science of eDNA in his novel, Burrows introduces readers to her groundbreaking work – which Clare praises him for representing as "accurately as you could be and not be the scientist" – expanding public awareness of the innovation and possibilities of conservation science in an engaging, accessible way. As a birder, that was something that especially drew Burrows to the ways Clare’s eDNA methods can detect elusive wildlife in hard-to-reach places. “I think it's really going to inform the data and drive a lot of conservation initiatives,” he says.
That leap from lab to literature is exactly why Clare said yes to Burrows when he first reached out. “I would say this is better than any award you could win,” she says. “I'm really glad I answered his email, because you get such interesting adventures when you say yes to things.”