Searching the deep seafloor for ancient DNA

Between March and May 2019 International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 382, Iceberg Alley and South Falkland Slope Ice and Ocean Dynamics, had set sail on the RV Joides Resolution to investigate the climate history of Antarctica. We drilled six sites nearby the South Falklands/Malvinas off Chile, and in the Scotia Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, providing the first deep drilling in this region of the Southern Ocean, enabling us to better understand the connections between changes in atmospheric CO2 , ice sheet extent and global sea level. As part of this expedition, Linda Armbrecht collected deep ocean sediment samples for the analysis of ancient DNA to reconstruct past marine life (in particular, marine microalgae), providing a picture of the biological responses to past climate variation.

Linda's personal blog "Postcards from Antarctica" can be found here: https://lindaarmbrecht.home.blog/

Updates that were posted daily during the expedition can be found here: https://joidesresolution.org/expedition/382/

Exp. 382 information page: https://iodp.tamu.edu/scienceops/expeditions/iceberg_alley_paleoceanography.html

The Sabrina Seafloor Survey was a 2017 voyage of Australian, Italian, Spanish and American scientists on Australia's research vessel Investigator, led by A/Prof Leanne Armand (ANU) and Dr Phil O'Brien (MQ). Our voyage departed January 14th, for 51 days down through the Southern Ocean to the Sabrina Coast of Antarctica, where the Totten Glacier is found. The aim was to survey for the first time the continental slope of the region and then to locate places where we could core the seafloor to retrieve records of the oscillation between warm and cold periods of the Earth's past in this very unique ecosystem. We had other scientists on board looking at the living phytoplankton communities and also sampling Antarctic aerosols. Dr Linda Armbrecht was leading the ancient DNA sampling from Kasten Cores retrieved during this expedition.

The voyage blog and website can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/sabrinaseafloorsurvey/home

ABC News article on Linda's sedaDNA sampling: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-31/csiro-hunt-ancient-dna-antarctica-climate-change/8224684