In Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, the University of East Anglia, and the JGI have explored the genome of the polar algae Microglena sp. YARC. The green alga harbors extra genes for proteins requiring zinc, and those genes turn out to be key for the phytoplankton’s ability to live in cold polar waters. Learn more here on the JGI website.
As part of this study, this team of researchers linked species-level observations with data on microalgal communities across different ocean latitudes from pole to pole, using metatranscriptome and metagenome data from the JGI. The work is part of a long-term collaboration with the JGI Algal Program, which makes genomes and multi-omics data from JGI CSP projects publicly available at the PhycoCosm portal.
