BRANFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For many years, researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany have been studying polar and marine environments to improve our understanding of ocean-ice-atmosphere interactions and the animal and plant kingdoms of the Arctic and Antarctic. Now, researchers at the AWI, led by Klaus Valentin and his colleague Thomas Mock from the University of East Anglia, have announced their plans to perform the first metagenomic analysis of the diverse set of organisms living within arctic sea ice. They plan to support the project using the award sequencing received as a runner-up winner for the 10 Gigabase Grant Program from 454 Life Sciences, a Roche company. Metagenomic sequencing, which allows researchers to obtain a detailed view into the phylogenetic composition and functional diversity within a complex sample, has been largely enabled by 454 Sequencing Systems in recent years.
