Southern Ocean Time Capsules [SOniC]: unravelling lives of microorganisms in the paleo-ocean to predict the future of climate change

SOniC provides a unique opportunity to understand the long-term dynamics of microorganisms in the Southern Ocean from past to present.

Using pre-existing sequencing data from 100 water samples and 189 samples from DNA preserved in ancient sediments (sedaDNA), SOniC will track the response of marine prokaryotic microorganisms (prokaryotes, comprising bacteria and archaea) to climate change over an extended time frame of up to 1 million years.

This is important because the Southern Ocean ecosystem is highly susceptible to climate change effects.

Further, prokaryotes are abundant and provide important ecosystem services, but we still know very little about their diversity and function.

Such data is important to accurately trace climate conditions in the past and help in predicting the consequences of future climate change effects on the ecosystem. This information will be a crucial knowledgebase supporting science-based policy making of global climate initiatives. SOniC will build a comprehensive Southern Ocean microbial gene catalogue.

Then, SOniC will map past Southern Ocean prokaryotes and observe species diversity patterns in comparison to modern prokaryotes communities at multiple Southern Ocean regions.

By exploring the microbial community composition, interactions, and metabolic capacities derived from the DNA sequences, and correlating them with relevant environmental conditions, we can have a better understanding of microbial ecosystem dynamics at the Southern Ocean.