Project Description
Marine ecosystems are being fundamentally altered by climate change, especially in circumstances where habitat-forming species are negatively impacted. Understanding the responses of habitat-forming species to changing climate has therefore become a major conservation requirement in the Anthropocene. One major factor determining the response of organisms to stressors like increasing temperature is their genetic potential to acclimate and adapt. However, predictions of such “genetic resilience” depend on the availability of high-quality genome sequences, which has previously been cost-prohibitive, limiting the number of marine organisms with high quality genomes that have been published. Recent advances in sequencing technologies and bioinformatic analysis have reduced the cost of producing such genomes, opening up this exciting new resource for use in marine ecosystems.
The prototype collected seagrass samples and successfully completed the HiC library preps from the nuclei extracted in 2020, however, the sequencing data yields were too low to pass the QC to commence deep sequencing. Subsequent trials were interrupted by COVID-19 and the project was stopped.
The availability of these sequences would provide a valuable resource for additional research in areas such as population genetics, environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis and genomics – all emerging components of marine ecosystem management. It has the potential to lead to the identification of genes that increase the efficiency of biosequestration.