JGI Helps Shed Light on How Antarctic Algae Have Adapted to Cold - Biosciences Area

A photograph of a stream of diatoms underneath Arctic sea ice. — The view beneath Arctic sea ice of the diatoms Melosira arctica (Credit: Lianna Nixon, University of Colorado, Boulder; taken using a ROV)

In Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences, the University of East Anglia, and the Joint Genome Institute (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.