RESEARCH/REVIEW ARTICLE Abundance, viability and diversity of the indigenous microbial populations at different depths of the NEEM Greenland ice core Vanya Miteva,1 Kaitlyn Rinehold,1 Todd Sowers,2 Aswathy Sebastian3 & Jean Brenchley1 1 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania State University, 432 South Frear Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA 2 Department of Geosciences, Earth and Environment Systems Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, 2217 EES Building, 317a, University Park, PA 16802, USA 3 Bioinformatics Consulting Center, The Pennsylvania State University, 502B Wartik, University Park, PA 16802, USA Keywords Abstract Greenland; NEEM ice core; indigenous microbial diversity; isolates; Illumina MiSeq. The 2537-m-deep North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) core provided a first-time opportunity to perform extensive microbiological analyses on Correspondence selected, recently drilled ice core samples representing different depths, ages, Vanya Miteva, Department of Biochemistry ice structures, deposition climates and ionic compositions. Here, we applied and Molecular Biology, The Pennsylvania cultivation, small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene clone library construction and State University, 432 South Frear Illumina next-generation sequencing (NGS) targeting the V4ÁV5 region, to Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA. examine the microbial abundance, viability and diversity in five deconta- E-mail:
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