Metagenomic and metatranscriptomic analysis of glacial, basal, and accretion ice from the Vostok ice core

The Vostok Ice core in East Antarctica is 3,769 m in length. The upper 3,310 m consists of glacial ice that is meteoric, and has remained in discrete layers. The next 218 m consists of basal ice, which is glacial ice that has interacted with the subtending bedrock, which has distorted its structure and contents. The final 225 m of ice is accretion ice, which is lake water frozen to the bottom of the glacier. In this project, we used metagenomic and metatranscriptomic methods to investigate the contents of ice core sections from the glacial ice (2,149 m section), basal ice (3,501 and 3,520 m sections), and accretion ice (3,540, 3,569 and 3,585 m sections). The community of organisms from the meteoric ice was then compared to those from the accretion ice to determine influx of organisms flowing into the lake from the glacial ice, as well as the mixing of organisms from one region of the lake to another.