Comparative functional biodiversity of Antarctic and Arctic Sea Ice Communities

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Peter Kroth; Dr. Klaus Valentin
• Subject Area: Oceanography
• Term: from 2011 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 198610751

The aim of this project is to determine the eukaryotic biodiversity and transcriptional activity in Arctic sea ice samples using phylogenetic approaches, and to compare the results to respective data obtained from Antarctic sea ice samples. Sea ice is a seemingly hostile habitat with regard to its abiotic constraints. Despite these harsh conditions it is heavily populated by microbial organisms, constituting an ecosystem of global significance. Here we propose to describe the molecular biodiversity of selected sea ice communities by generating environmental 18s rDNA libraries, helping us to unravel the identity of unknown or unculturable species („hidden biodiversity"). We also aim for determining the transcriptional input of eukaryotic sea ice organisms to ecosystem functioning by randomly sequencing environmental cDNA samples. Using recently developed phylogenetic tools we will determine function and phylogenetic affiliation of ESTs and on order to link sea ice biodiversity with transcriptional activity of major groups and selected genomes and metagenomes. We further intend to correlate biodiversity and transcriptional activity with in situ physical and biochemical parameters measured during.sampling. Finally we will compare the functional biodiversity in Antarctic versus Arctic sea ice. Since psychrophilic microorganisms possess unique physiological adaptations to their extreme habitat, they are potentially interesting objects for applied science.

• DFG Programme: Infrastructure Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1158: Antarctic Research with Comparable Investigations in Arctic Sea Ice Areas - with renewal proposal 2025 - 2030
• Participating Person: Privatdozent Dr. Gerhard Dieckmann