Research Updates: 2006 Activity Report
Goals and Objectives
This project is funded by National Science Foundation (MO#0347475) for the purpose of observing microbes in the Greenland ice core. Studying extremophiles surviving at low temperatures is important for understanding the limits of life processes, for searching for extraterrestrial life, and for providing enzymes with novel properties for biotechnological uses.
Our specific scientific goals are to:
- Detect the abundance and viability of the prokaryotic populations within the different ice core samples and determine whether specific organisms correlate with certain physicochemical characteristics of the ice.
- Determine the microbial diversity in selected samples using both culture independent and culture dependent analyses to obtain a comprehensive view of the dynamic distribution of major phylogenetic groups in the populations.
- Monitor the in situ production of trace gases (CH4 and N2O), which are known products of some microbial metabolic processes.
Summary of the research
Microbial diversity has been designated as a new frontier for exploration, and glacial ice offers a unique opportunity to combine microbial population studies with investigations of microbial survival and biogeochemical activity at subzero temperatures. Our project takes advantage of the well preserved and geochemically analyzed samples available from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2) to correlate the paleoclimatic records with the abundance and diversity of organisms from different deposition times (over 120,000 years) and depths (from the surface to 3,052 mbs).
This interdisciplinary study will provide data on the vertical geochemical changes and distribution of microbial diversity within one glacial site and will allow intra- and inter-core comparisons. Investigating this ice core will lead to the discovery of novel microorganisms existing within extreme ecological niches frozen for over 120,000 years and address longstanding questions about the limits of life, the low culturability of organisms, and possible metabolic activity within glacial ice. The objective is to develop a comprehensive picture of the prokaryotic populations in ice core samples selected to represent different depths/time periods, deposition temperatures, and gas and salt compositions, and to test whether microbial metabolism may have influenced the trace gas composition within the ice.more...
