6870b671-42f4-4692-9ce2-6084e10575ec Daniela Billi University of Rome Tor Vergata billi@uniroma2.it 2025-05-12T14:21:08 ISO 19139 1.0 WGS84 MIDAS: MIcrobial Diversity within the Vicinity of the Concordia Antarctic Station 2021-10-01 https://antarcticdatacenter.cnr.it/geonetwork/srv/api/records/fb76df45-1654-46c0-b827-b4252769fe0f The Concordia Research Station provides a unique location for preparatory activities for future human journey to Mars, to explore microbial diversity at subzero temperatures and monitor the dissemination of human-associated microorganisms within the pristine surrounding environment. The present study was performed in the frame of the BacFinder project (European Space Agency, ESA AO-13-Concordia) with the aim to unravel the environmental- and human-associated microbial diversity in the surrounding of the Concordia Station. This is the first intensive and extensive surface snow sampling performed monthly over a two-year period at three distances (10, 500, and 1000 m) from the Concordia Station, and investigated by a high-throughput sequencing approach. Emphasis was laid on the relation between microbial presence and both seasonality and distance from the Base. Data suggested that if present the anthropogenic impact was below the detection limit of the employed DNA sequencing-based techniques. On the other hand, our study corroborated the use of DNA sequencing for revealing microbial presence in remote and hostile environments, with implications for Planetary Protections and for life-detection in astrobiology relevant targets. A comprehensive analysis of the biodiversity in the snow/ice samples will be carried out by using molecular biology (cultivation-independent) techniques combined to bioinformatics tools. Attention will be given to the genetic diversity of bacteria, cyanobacteria and fungi in the surrounding areas of Concordia station. The microbial community structure and genetic diversity will be characterized by amplification of ribosomal genes and metagenomics assay. This approach will allow to : i) determine the microbial diversity outside the Concordia station, (ii) evaluate the influence on the microbial diversity of the environmental conditions, (iii) assess the anthropogenic impact from the Concordia station on the pristine Antarctic environment, and (iv) model the microbial dynamics. Results will provide new insights into the Antarctic microbial biodiversity within the vicinity of the Concordia Station, and, by integrating the results with microclimatic data, will contribute to a better understanding of the structure and dynamics of the microbial communities with implications when monitoring and predicting climate change effects. This proposal will contribute to the use of results of projects aimed at assessing the role of aerial dispersal in shaping the patterns of biodiversity in Antarctica. In addition, it will contribute to achieve an integrated knowledge of the microbial diversity in Antarctica, being complementary for investigated areas and colonized substrata to the proposed proposals MDV-MICRO (PI S. Ventura), AMunDsEN (PI L. Selbmann) e PermEco (PI M. Guglielmin). Finally, given that Earth’s frozen polar regions are considered analogues of near-surface environments of Mars and of the Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, the results of this proposal will be relevant for astrobiology research programs aimed at searching life beyond Earth Daniela Billi University of Rome Tor Vergata billi@uniroma2.it Laura Selbmann University of Tuscia selbmann@unitus.it Concordia Station SCAR Gazetteer of Antarctica 2021-01-01 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.scar_gazetteer_multi Soil GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 2008-01-01 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.httpinspireeceuropaeutheme-theme SNOW/ICE TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS GCMD - Science Keywords 2015-01-01 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.gcmd-sciencekeywords microbial diversity MIDAS PNRA16_00101 PNRA project 2024-03-18 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.PNRAproject Università di Roma Tor Vergata Università della Tuscia Research Organization 2024-03-18 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.Research_Organization IT/PNRA GCMD - Providers 2023-07-24 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.thesaurus Initiative and Programs 2023-10-02 geonetwork.thesaurus.local.theme.InitiativeandPrograms SnowTerm 2024-01-01 geonetwork.thesaurus.external.theme.snowterm   Creative-Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0         NUMERO SPEDIZIONE/SPEDIZIONI 1 -180.00 180.00 -90.00 -60.516 1 https://www.pnra.aq/it/project/353/microbial-diversity-within-vicinity-concordia-antarctic-station WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link PNRA project COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services 2010-12-08 This data set is conformant with the INSPIRE Implementing Rules for the interoperability of spatial data sets and services true GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE DATA ORIGIN AND HOW IT GETS TRANSFORMED ALONG THE WAY FROM THE INSTRUMENT TO THE DATABASE.