Arctic studies of microbial community structures of suspended and sinking particles

Our study aims to explore the microbial community structures in both suspended and sinking particles in the Arctic Ocean, focusing on understanding their roles in the biological pump under the influence of significant environmental changes caused by global warming. As the Arctic faces more severe challenges, such as sea ice reduction, these changes would affect the efficiency of the biological pump. Although previous studies have focused on suspended particles in the western Arctic Ocean, the microbial communities in sinking particles, which serve as hotspots for microbial activity, remain largely unknown. We used a marine snow catcher to simultaneously collect suspended and sinking particles from the surface chlorophyll maximum layers and performed 16S and 18S rRNA sequencing to analyze the prokaryotic and eukaryotic community structures in two particle types.