{"id":253504,"date":"2026-09-29T12:05:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T16:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=253504"},"modified":"2026-09-30T14:12:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:12:50","slug":"mapping-uncharted-antarctic-genomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/09\/mapping-uncharted-antarctic-genomes\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping Uncharted Antarctic Genomes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Months without light. Bitter, biting winds. Glacial waters. The harsh environment of the Antarctic should be utterly uninhabitable \u2013 and yet, countless species have flourished in its icy seas and on its rocky shores.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How have organisms as diverse as elephant seals and Antarctic hair grass adapted to these extreme conditions? And how will they continue to adapt — or not — in environmental change over seasons, decades, and evolutionary timescales?<\/span><\/p>\n

A new <\/span><\/span>$18.4 million award<\/span><\/span><\/a> from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Mid-scale Research Infrastructure-1 (MSRI) program <\/span>aims to build <\/span>the infrastructure to answer these questions<\/span>.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Word<\/p>\n

The project, \u201cGenome Infrastructure catalyzing next Generation Antarctic Data, Access, Tools, and Analytics\u201d (GIGA DATA), is led by Alison Murray at the Desert Research Institute. $6.6 million of the award is coming to UConn, where co-PIs Rachel O\u2019Neill and Jill Wegrzyn will contribute their genome sequencing and assembly expertise.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Antarctic is the largest desert on the planet \u2013 it’s a really unique environment,\u201d says O\u2019Neill, a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB) and director of UConn\u2019s <\/span>Institute for Systems Genomics (ISG)<\/span><\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s also an extreme environment where most life on Earth would not survive. This project offers a way to assess species adaptations to extreme environments and dramatic environmental change, and potentially what their resilience might be.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to exploring resilience, the project may also unlock the genetic secrets of some little-understood biological mechanisms.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are novel discoveries to be made in diverse species,\u201d O\u2019Neill says. \u201cFor example, the Antarctic ice fish have proteins that keep their cells from freezing, and these antifreeze compounds could be really useful in biomedical sciences.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
A diver and a sea spider, one of many species who have made an unlikely home in the harsh waters of the Antarctic. (Sam Afoullouss)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

O\u2019Neill has built her career on understanding how genomes are structured and evolve over time. Her research group at UConn uses a comparative genomics approach across the tree of life, having sequenced hundreds of eukaryotic genomes. She was a principal investigator on the international Telomere-to-Telomere project, which completed <\/span>sequencing the human genome<\/a> in <\/span>2022 and the <\/span>human Y chromosome<\/a> in 2023<\/span>, and the Primate T2T Consortium, which sequenced the genomes of our great ape relatives.<\/span> \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

O\u2019Neill\u2019s lab brings special expertise in <\/span>genome assembly and <\/span>repeat analysis \u2013 detangling and decoding many thousands of repeated, short sequences of DNA<\/span> to reveal their impact and exaptation as <\/span>regulatory elements<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge on my end is the diversity of samples that we’re going to get \u2013 as well as the quality of the samples,\u201d she says. \u201cSome of those are going to be really challenging to get enough data to actually generate genome assemblies. That’s where our technical expertise comes in — because we’ve done so many diverse species, we can bring a lot of those tools to the project.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Genomes as a Community Resource<\/h2>\n

In all, GIGA DATA will sequence over 250 eukaryotic genomes (including algae and mosses, terrestrial and marine invertebrates, birds, fish, and marine mammals) and 600 bacterial and viral metagenomes.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most importantly, it will contribute these new genomes to a database for other scientists to access — uniting new data together with existing Antarctic sequencing efforts under a new, artificial intelligence\u2013enabled cyberinfrastructure.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The resulting digital platform will serve as an open, accessible data science gateway to Antarctic life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Six
Jill Wegrzyn (center) and members of her Plant Computational Genomics Lab who all contribute to the assembly and annotation of eukaryotic genomes: Micelle Neitzey and Vidya Vuruputoor (postdoctoral scholars, left), Airianna McGuire, Meghan Myles, and Cynthia Webster (Ph.D. students, right). Undergraduate and graduate students in the Wegrzyn and O\u2019Neill labs will get to contribute to this project, which also seeks to boost the genomics workforce. (John Lucas, UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NSF MSRI grants support the development of infrastructure which can propel science forward. Typically, they are awarded to teams developing mechanical equipment, like a high-powered telescope. In this case, the genomic data itself — as well as the sophisticated database in which it is stored — is the infrastructure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are putting it all into a framework where people in the community can use these resources effectively,\u201d says Wegrzyn, an associate professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (EEB), who also directs the Computational Biology Core within the ISG. \u201cThis is a unique proposal in that it\u2019s thinking about genomes as a resource that science is built on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A
Nicole Pauloski, a research associate in Rachel O\u2019Neill\u2019s lab, works with a DNA sequencer. (Photo by Magda Kmiecik and Kendal Berasley)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wegrzyn has previously been awarded the <\/span>Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Researchers (PECASE)<\/span><\/a> for her contributions to computational and plant biology. Her research combines computer programming and genetics, and she has developed cutting-edge software to analyze challenging genomes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t sequence a genome end to end,\u201d she explains. \u201cSequencing involves extracting the DNA, breaking it into smaller pieces, and then putting it back together again. And in doing so, we have to think about which algorithms are most appropriate for that process \u2013 as well as how to balance both accuracy and efficiency.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As part of GIGA DATA, Wegrzyn is looking forward to applying her expertise in sequencing difficult genomes. Fortunately for her, the Antarctic environment is replete with these kinds of organisms \u2013 like the <\/span>Antarctic krill<\/span><\/a>, whose recently sequenced genome was revealed to contain almost 50 gigabases (for reference, the human genome contains only three).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat is one of the largest animal genomes that\u2019s been assembled and sequenced to date,\u201d says Wegrzyn. \u201cSometimes, the smallest things are the most complicated \u2013 and the largest things are easier.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

GIGA DATA will also benefit from Antarctica\u2019s unique geopolitical situation, notes Wegrzyn.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really unusual continent, in the sense that nobody really owns that region of the world,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd as a result of that, we are working with the global scientific community.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The genomes sequenced by the researchers will pave the way for future exploration of biodiversity in the Antarctic and beyond.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis database will build a resource for people to do <\/span>other work, such as <\/span>population genetic studies over <\/span>seasons and years<\/span>,\u201d <\/span>say<\/span>s O\u2019Neill. \u201cRight now, without genomes, [scientists are] looking at something like 5% of the actual genomic sequence. <\/span>They\u2019re<\/span> not necessarily assessing everything that could be <\/span>linked to adaptation<\/span>. Being able to look at that kind of population-level data requires a good genome \u2013 and <\/span>that\u2019s<\/span> something that this data is providing.\u201d<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Close-up
A Weddell seal pup poses for researcher Arvind Varsani. (Arvind Varsani)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pole to Pole<\/h2>\n

O\u2019Neill and Wegrzyn are also both collaborators on the <\/span>Evolving Meta-Ecosystems (EVOME)<\/span><\/a> initiative, charting biodiversity at the other end of the earth \u2013 the Arctic.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the species present in both regions are quite different, the challenges are similar.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking at the same types of things in both projects,\u201d says Wegrzyn. \u201cWe’re looking at these regions of the world that are very rapidly warming, and these species are having to adapt to this new environment. Do they have the capacity to do that? By understanding their genomes, we’ll get a better idea of what’s going on.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to Murray, O\u2019Neill, and Wegrzyn, the GIGA DATA research team includes:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n