Metagenomic analysis of a glacial ice core record from the contiguous United States

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-19-2024

Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Abstract

Glacial ice preserves time-sequenced records of preserved microbes, offering access to historic pre-anthropic metagenomes. As proof-of-concept, we three tested methods to recover ancient DNA from a ~250-year ice core from Wyoming's Upper Fremont Glacier for metagenomic sequencing. Direct amplification of filter-concentrated melt water (eDNA) was a simple and effective method for metagenomics. We observed higher microbial diversity, enriched nitrogen-cycling genes, and higher abundance of Nitrosopira, Rhodanobacter and Polaromonas sequences in 1790 CE samples compared to 1900-1961 CE samples. The documented microbial variation may be attributable to changes in climate and land use over the last two centuries.

Publisher's Statement

© 2024. Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-5045654/v1

Publication Title

Research Square

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Version

Preprint

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