Tim Sargent on Canada
Tim Sargent on Canada's anemic growth and productivity: MLI in Parliament
Tim Sargent on Canada’s anemic growth and productivity: MLI in Parliament

Sea angels and devils: could plankton unlock the secrets of human biology? | Marine life [Video]

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Newfoundland and Labrador News

Off the west coast of Greenland, a 17-metre (56ft) aluminium sailing boat creeps through a narrow, rocky fjord in the Arctic twilight. The research team onboard, still bleary-eyed from the rough nine-day passage across the Labrador Sea, lower nets to collect plankton. This is the first time anyone has sequenced the DNA of the tiny marine creatures that live here.

Watching the nets with palpable excitement is Prof Leonid Moroz, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida’s Whitney marine lab. “This is what the world looked like when life began,” he tells his friend, Peter Molnar, the expedition leader with whom he co-founded the Ocean Genome Atlas Project (Ogap).

Moroz gestures toward Greenland’s glaciated valleys. The rapid warming here is replicating conditions from 600m years ago, when complex life forms began appearing. “We’re sailing through deep biological time right now,” he says.

A Sapphirina copepod – tiny crustacea known as sea sapphires. The structural coloration …

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