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Ocean Genome Legacy | World Oceans Day

Happy World Oceans Day from  

Ocean Genome Legacy!

 

We hope you'll celebrate and protect our life-sustaining oceans on this international day of awareness. This year's theme, "Healthy oceans, healthy planet," highlights the importance of clean, thriving oceans to our climate, our nutrition, and our future.

 

We have a lot to learn from the incredible biodiversity of the oceans! This special edition of our newsletter highlights some of the latest ways OGL is preserving and documenting the diversity of marine life.


Sincerely,

Dan Distel, Ph.D.
Ocean Genome Legacy
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What do fish eat for dinner?

 

 

We're not the only ones who like to eat seafood! Using forensic-style DNA barcoding, OGL is analyzing the stomach contents of fish to see who's eating whom. Since it's hard to identify a partially digested meal just by looking at it, we extract and sequence DNA to determine what species it was.  

 

Learning about a fish's diet can help us determine whether there's enough food fish for everyone on the food chain--including humans. It's important to protect our favorite seafood fishes, as well as the species that make up their meals. Decoding fish food can also help us provide better nutrition and care to fish in aquariums and aquaculture.

 

We offer this service to researchers around the world. Curious what your local fish are eating? Send us your samples!

 

  

Who's hiding on the Alaskan seabed?

 


This spring, we received more than 400 samples from the cold depths of Alaska's Aleu
tian Islands.These samples, donated by scientists from Coastal Marine Biolabs, were part of a long-term study of bottom-dwelling fish species. The shipboard scientists examined, photographed, measured, and documented everything that came through their nets. Some of the key commercial species include Pacific cod, rockfish, and Alaska pollock, but the survey also turned up shy, hidden species like long, thin poacher fish and squat, bug-eyed sculpins.

The Alaska study is tracking these species over time: how abundant they are, where they're found, and how well they're reproducing. This information can lead to updated fishing regulations and help ensure sustainable catches. By archiving samples from this project, OGL provides a "time capsule" of reference materials for continuing studies of these valuable fish species.


 Fish collected from the Aleutian Islands survey. (Credit: BOLD Public Data Portal.)

 

 

Strange fish offer lessons on evolution and immunity

 

 

OGL recently added DNA samples from two unusual species: the elephant shark, a harmless fish with an odd trunk-like snout, and the Japanese lamprey, a parasitic fish with a rasping sucker mouth. What can these funky fish teach us? Our partners at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore sequenced these genomes because they provide a glimpse into the evolutionary path that led to us.

 

Our collaborator Dr. Byrappa Venkatesh with an elephant shark. (Credit: IMCB, A*STAR.)
A Japanese lamprey. (Credit: IMCB, A*STAR.)

How would you survive without bones? Elephant sharks and lampreys get along fine using cartilage instead. Lampreys don't even have jaws!  

 

Studying the DNA of these species can teach us where our familiar features came from and show us the creative solutions that our distant fish relatives use. For example, humans and elephant sharks use different sets of oxygen-carrying proteins. At first, lampreys seemed primitive because they don't have essential pieces of our immune system, but their DNA revealed that lampreys

actually use a different strategy to adapt to pathogens.  

 

These types of comparisons, using diverse organisms, can suggest new avenues for medical research and offer unexpected solutions for biotechnology. Archiving the DNA samples at OGL makes these materials widely available for research inspired by these genetic insights.

   

 

Spread the word!  

 

Celebrate World Oceans Day by sharing your passion for marine biodiversity!

 

We hope you learned something new about marine life and how OGL is preserving the biodiversity that's crucial to "Healthy oceans, healthy planet."

 

You can make a difference today!  

 

Spread the word by sharing your ocean awareness with five people: Remind them how important it is to protect our oceans and marine biodiversity.


 

Want to help OGL document and preserve the spectacular genetic diversity of our world's oceans? 

 

 

Thank you for your continued support!