EAGER: ANT LIA: Persist or Perish: Records of Microbial Survival and Long-term Persistence from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

We will achieve these goals by utilizing subsamples from the ~65 ka record of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WD) Ice Core. WD samples will be melted using the Desert Research Institute’s ice core melting system that is optimized for glaciobiological sampling.

Microbial cells from the meltwater will be sorted using fluorescence-activated cell sorting, and individually sorted cells will have their genomes sequenced. The fluorescence-based methods will discern the viable (metabolically active) cells from those cells that are non-viable but preserved in the ice (DNA-containing). Our genomic analysis will identify the taxonomy of each cell, presence of known genes that confer survival in permanently frozen environments, and comparatively analyze genomes to determine the core set of genes required by viable cells to persist in an ice sheet.