Planning: ANT LIA Planning an Antarctic Omics Initiative (AOI) to Advance Understanding of the Evolution and Adaptive Potential of Antarctic Organisms

Nevada System Of Higher Education, Desert Research Institute, Reno NV

Investigators

Abstract

Life in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean is exceptionally susceptible to climate change. Understanding how Antarctic organisms and assemblages acclimate and adapt to climatic shifts and cascading impacts is essential to conservation efforts and forecasting critical changes. The blueprints of evolutionary history and the potential to adapt to environmental change are encoded in (meta)genomes. This project is a response to the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s (NASEM) 2015 Strategic Vision for Antarctic and Southern Ocean Research vision of an Antarctic genomics initiative that would catalyze the science needed to decode the genomic and functional bases of adaptation in changing environments across the spectrum of Antarctic life. The project will convene a workshop to build consensus across a diverse community of life scientists to turn this vision into actionable proposals, and there is significant potential for the community building and planning activities to galvanize an Antarctic ‘Omics Initiative (AOI) that will have considerable impacts on society’s understanding of Antarctic life by engendering predictions of how it may evolve, resist, acclimate, or become susceptible to changes in climate. Societal benefits include engaging the scientific community across multiple disciplines, enhancing the diversity of Antarctic researchers, developing new expertise in Antarctic sciences, and fostering an informed public. The primary aim of this project is to realize the potential for making fundamental advances in understanding polar life and its inextricable links to survival and adaptation across Antarctica’s remarkably diverse ecosystems. The project will facilitate a results-driven workshop to create an implementation plan for making transformative advances in understanding Antarctic biota and assemblages and address large-scale, broad, ecosystem-based questions. They will foster an integrative understanding of biological adaptation to environmental change and the extreme ecosystems found in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean by utilizing cross-ecosystem, interdisciplinary comparative genomic approaches. The open-design workshop will engage researchers with expertise in executing large scale, integrated genomics programs, developing models for training, and engaging the next generation of polar scientists. By addressing these large-scale, broad, ecosystem-based questions, this project aims to build a sustainable, networked, international scientific community and engender ideas to serve as the foundation for an initiative that will accelerate knowledge gain and community building. The project aims to build a sustainable community of scientists by recruiting a diverse, inclusive cohort of participants. The participants will create a summary of contributions to date of ‘omics-inspired studies that have contributed to our understanding of Antarctic evolution and adaptation and synthesize the outcomes of the workshop in a report that will be available to NSF and the scientific community. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.