NASC scientists will be able to take advantage of opportunities of the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF) and Our institution received a corresponding grant from the Ukraine-Australia Research Fund.
Why is it important?
There is also life in the freshwater lakes of Antarctica, although not too diverse. Usually there can be found crustaceans:
- copepods (Copepoda), among which the most common species in Antarctica is Boeckella poppei;
- species of a genus Brancinecta are representatives of another family of crustaceans.
To survive in the harsh Antarctic conditions, they easily adapt to rapid changes in water temperature, salinity, etc. But how this adaptation occurs is unknown, and scientists have yet to find it out. In the context of climate change, such information is extremely useful to humanity. And the first stage of research is to read the complete set of genetic information – the genome of these species.
In Australia, there is an organization that is involved in empowering world class genomic science: the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF). That’s where the samples collected by Ukrainian scientists in the Antarctic will be transferred. It is planned that the work on genome project for species found in Antarctic freshwater lakes will continue throughout 2024. The results will be published after completion of the work.
It is worth noting that 9 Ukrainian scientific institutions received grants for access to Australian research infrastructure.
Recall that earlier Ukrainian scientists co-authored an article published in Nature on the reasons for the temperature record in Antarctica.
Photo: Leonid Svetlichnyi