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Greetings!
A big part of our job here at OGL is spreading the genome banking gospel. Not just by building our own collections, but also by helping to build collections in other parts of the world. In this newsletter, you will find out about one such effort in Malaysia.
And, as always, follow our expeditions and other news from the marine world on our Facebook and Twitter pages!
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Malaysian Marine Biodiversity
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Dr. Shariman Ghazali instructing a collection team of students and faculty from the National University of Malaysia in preparation for the Tioman Island expedition.
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Satellites and Mirrors
Did you ever wonder how many species live in the oceans? Estimates range from 700,000 to more than 2 million (excluding microorganisms, whose numbers are almost unimaginably large). Most of them have never been seen, named, or described! Even if you only count the species already named and described, the number is over 200,000.
So how can OGL ever hope to archive them all? Part of the answer lies in satellite and mirror repositories. An OGL satellite repository is one that carries the OGL name but is hosted in another country or location, and an OGL mirror repository is the same except that every specimen in the foreign repository is "mirrored" by a matching sample in the OGL collection here in Nahant. By building satellite and mirror collections, OGL is expanding its sphere of influence and recruiting the help of other scientists and institutions around the world to conquer one of the most ambitious goals of all time; to archive every species in the ocean!
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The dive boat "Black Pearl" served as the main research platform for the Tioman Islands Expedition. Here it is in port at the Tioman Marine Park Center headquarters.
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One of our most recent efforts has been to create "OGL Malaysia" a genomic biodiversity archive project recently launched in cooperation with the National University of Malaysia (UKM). Led by Dr. Rahmah Mohamed, outgoing Chair of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Council at UKM, and directed by Professor Shahriman Ghazali of UKM EKOMAR, OGL Malaysia launched its first collection expedition in the waters around Tioman Island, a world-renowned coral reef dive location on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Dr. Ghazali known as "Shah" to his friends, was joined by OGL Board member and Nobel Laureate Sir Richard Roberts, OGL Director Dan Distel, and multiple scientists and students from UKM for several days of diving and collecting based from the dive boat "Black Pearl." During this short expedition hundreds of specimens representing numerous marine species of fish, corals and invertebrates were sampled, documented and archived.
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One of the many tropical fish collected during the Tioman Island expedition.
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OGL will continue working with collaborators at UKM and other institutions around the world during the coming years to build a comprehensive network of interconnected biorepositories archiving the world's marine biodiversity. Stay tuned for updates from other countries!
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Coming Soon... Global Genome Biodiversity Network & Symbiomics
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In upcoming issues, OGL Scientist Timery DeBoer will bring you highlights from the first International Conference on Biodiversity Banking to be held at the Natural History Museum in London from June 30-July 2, 2014. The conference is sponsored by the Global Genome Biodiversity Network as part of an effort to make non-human genomic collections more discoverable for research and to aid efforts to build biorepositories like the collection at OGL.
Also, OGL postdoc Reuben Shipway will describe his experiences at the Second Annual Symbiomics Course and Workshop held May 28-June 7 at the Hydra Marine Laboratory in Fetovia on the Island of Elba, Italy.
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DONATE TO OGL
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Want to help OGL document and preserve the spectacular genetic diversity of our world's oceans?
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Thanks for your continued support!
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