Marine genomics has the power to reveal the many
undiscovered secrets of the oceans.
The Oceans are filled with a diversity of life forms. This
means that getting a complete picture of marine biodiversity is challenging.
Now, researchers are exploring new ways of identifying organisms—particularly
invasive species—in sea water, as well as monitoring how marine life changes
and exploring how we could benefit from this knowledge.
Among those involved are marine scientists, who routinely
board research vessels to collect plankton samples, for example, along the
Swedish West coast. Historically they would return with the samples and look at
individual organisms under the microscope, trying to identify every single
organism on their search for invasive species. This is a very difficult task
when organisms are in their early life stage and difficult to distinguish.
“Invasive species have caused a lot of problems in the last twenty years and
they will cause more problems in the future”, says Matthias Obst, marine
scientist from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. “So we need to find
methods to understand the dynamics of invasive species. And here genomic
methods are very powerful.”