Pré-Publication, Document De Travail Année : 2025

The JEDI marker as a universal measure of planetary biodiversity

Taylor Priest
Nicolas Henry
Thomas Weber
Laurine Planat
Coralie Rousseau
Yi-Chun Yeh
David Needham
Hans-Joachim Ruscheweyh
Fabienne Rigaut-Jalabert
Sarah Romac
Thomas Beavis
Kevin Moog
Alice Moussy
Jan Korbel
Raffaele Siano
Julie Poulain
Paola Bertucci
Peer Bork
Jed Fuhrman
Flora Vincent
Shinichi Sunagawa

Résumé

Despite its critical importance in the formation and maintenance of ecosystems and homeostasis on Earth, biodiversity remains a complex and non-unified concept. Consequently, standards for measuring global biodiversity are lacking, hindering our capacity to document Earth’s biota and track its change. Here, we propose the ‘Joint, cellular life-Encompassing DIversity’ ( JEDI ) marker as a simple, effective and quantitative measure to assess and monitor biodiversity. The JEDI marker is a ribosomal RNA gene fragment that can be amplified from all domains of life using a single pair of PCR primers. We demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of this approach for assessing biodiversity across ecological and biological scales, from holobionts to diverse ecosystems. In addition, we provide an automated bioinformatic workflow to support the standardised and reproducible analysis of the JEDI marker in future studies. While this approach is not free from trade-offs, we argue that its advantages outweigh its limitations by providing a unique, operational and scalable solution that builds on established infrastructure to integrate the microbial majority into biodiversity assessments and provide fundamental insights into organismal dynamics and associations across domains of life. Thus, the JEDI marker approach addresses the urgent need for a universal and standardised framework to effectively measure and monitor biodiversity at planetary scales in an era of profound global change.

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hal-05507468 , version 1 (12-02-2026)

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Taylor Priest, Nicolas Henry, Thomas Weber, Laurine Planat, Coralie Rousseau, et al.. The JEDI marker as a universal measure of planetary biodiversity. 2026. ⟨hal-05507468⟩
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