“DNA of the Polar Seas - sampling the coldest and deepest microbes”
Nikolaj Sorgenfrei Blom, PhD
Guest Researcher at DTU Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
Abstract
The 2006-2007 Galathea 3 expedition was the largest Danish marine expedition in more than 50 years. The project “DNA of the polar seas” was the first DTU metagenomics project and the deepest sampling of Arctic and Antarctic water - down to 4300 meters and up to 240 liters per sample. The project also participated in the continental shelf mapping expedition LOMROG-II in 2009 to the North Pole and secured ice core and snow samples.
The genomics revolution and next-generation sequencing technologies made it possible to sequence the entire DNA pool of a microbial community generating a total of almost 200 billion DNA basepairs of data. This data was further processed by supercomputing to app. 5 mio predicted genes that were analyzed further and to date included in 3 peer-reviewed publications, 4 Ph.D. dissertations and one commercial license.
The presentation will include pictures and film about the life onboard a marine expedition.
(2014) Bacterial diversity in snow on North Pole ice floes
Hauptmann AL(1), Stibal M, Bælum J, Sicheritz-Pontén T, Brunak S, Bowman JS, Hansen LH, Jacobsen CS, Blom N.
Extremophiles 18 (6), 945-951
(2012) Wide distribution of closely related, antibiotic-producing Arthrobacter strains throughout the Arctic Ocean
Wietz M, Månsson M, Bowman JS, Blom N, Ng Y, Gram L
Appl Environ Microbiol. 2012;78(6):2039-42
(2012) Microbial community structure of Arctic multiyear sea ice and surface seawater by 454 sequencing of the 16S RNA gene
Bowman JS, Rasmussen S, Blom N, Deming JW, Rysgaard S, Sicheritz-Ponten T
ISME J. 6(1):11-20