Antarctica’s Deep Lake. (Rick Cavicchioli)

Haloarchaea flourish in hypersaline environments, and researchers are interested in learning how these microbes have learned to adapt from marine to hypersaline conditions by studying the microbial communities in Antarctic lakes. To assess the genomic variation in haloarchaea, a team including JGI researchers characterized metagenomes (collections of partial genomes) from six hypersaline Antarctic lakes. These data allowed researchers to define a haloarchaea “pan-genome,” the total pool of genetic material comprised by all members of a species. The The genome and metagenome data are available through JGI’s Integrated Microbial Genomes & Microbiomes (IMG/M) platform. Learn more on the JGI website.