Contamination of the Arctic reflected in microbial metagenomes from the Greenland ice sheet

• Published in: Environmental Research Letters
• Main Authors: Aviaja L Hauptmann, Thomas Sicheritz-Pontén, Karen A Cameron, Jacob Bælum, Damian R Plichta, Marlene Dalgaard, Marek Stibal
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: IOP Publishing 2017
• Subjects: metagenomics; cryosphere; contamination; Greenland ice sheet; microbial ecology; Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering; TD1-1066; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Science; Q; Physics; QC1-999; Arctic; Greenland; Climate change; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7445; https://doaj.org/article/5f40c3f7283f449cbf985a3dc31d484c

Globally emitted contaminants accumulate in the Arctic and are stored in the frozen environments of the cryosphere. Climate change influences the release of these contaminants through elevated melt rates, resulting in increased contamination locally. Our understanding of how biological processes interact with contamination in the Arctic is limited. Through shotgun metagenomic data and binned genomes from metagenomes we show that microbial communities, sampled from multiple surface ice locations on the Greenland ice sheet, have the potential for resistance to and degradation of contaminants. The microbial potential to degrade anthropogenic contaminants, such as toxic and persistent polychlorinated biphenyls, was found to be spatially variable and not limited to regions close to human activities. Binned genomes showed close resemblance to microorganisms isolated from contaminated habitats. These results indicate that, from a microbiological perspective, the Greenland ice sheet cannot be seen as a pristine environment.