“[A]rguably the most extreme adaptation a terrestrial (and even a freshwater) species can undergo.”
Coastal seagrass ecosystems cover some 200,000 square kilometers. They account for an estimated 15 percent of carbon fixed in global ocean, and also impact sulfur and nitrogen cycles.As a foundational species in the coastal marine ecosystem, researchers are interested in understanding how the plant—and by extension other plants in the ecosystem—adapts to climate change. Published online January 27, 2016 in Nature – and as the cover of the journal’s February 18, 2016 issue – a European team including researchers from the DOE Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) sequenced a seagrass genome: that of the eelgrass Zostera marina, taken from the Archipelago Sea off Finland. Read more on the DOE JGI website.
