Keywords: environmental genomics, Antarctica, marine bacterioplankton, genome sequencing, Palmer Station

Project Description

In order to get a much more enhanced and detailed picture of marine bacterioplankton genomes the Joint Genome Institute will sequence environmental genomic DNA from late winter and summer genomic libraries sampled from the waters off-shore of Palmer Station, Antarctic Peninsula. We still know little of nature of the differences in communities inhabiting surface waters during summer and winter - though they are quite different in composition (~ 60% different). Both libraries will be end-sequenced producing 34,000 single read sequences. Then using comparative genomic approaches we may be able to distinguish the genomic features that make the bacterioplankton communities distinct between these two different times of year. We then will select 150 large insert clones to sequence from each library which will provide more detailed information concerning this subset of the whole representing both unique, and commonly represented members of the community.

Website: CSP 2006 Sequencing plans