New Ikka article on Microbiology
Congrats to Mariane Schmidt Thøgersen and co-workers on their new Ikka publication on the incredible biodiversity found inside the ikaite columns of Ikka Fjord in SW Greenland:
Thøgersen MS, Zervas A, Stougaard P and Ellegaard-Jensen L (2024) Investigating eukaryotic and prokaryotic diversity and functional potential in the cold and alkaline ikaite columns in Greenland.
Front. Microbiol. 15:1358787. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1358787
Link to the article can be found here: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2024.1358787/full
The ikaite columns that Mariane has been working on are the ones that we collected in summer 2019 by the help of F360 Hvidbjørnen, Joint Arctic Command (JACO). With the help of their Navy divers, we managed to collect three samples from each of three columns, and upon return to Iceland, I divided the column samples in two and shipped them off to Aarhus University for microbiological studies. Mariane rapidly realised that these new column samples were teaming with life and she had to focus her work on just one of the three columns. Those are the results that’s published now. In just this one column, the bacterial communities are changing over the the column from bottom to top. Thus, we can only begin to imagine the high biodiversity that probably exists over the entire column garden of c. 950 columns. There likely is a huge potential for hitherto unknown enzymes that could be used for medical uses or food industry etc.