Adaptations to hostile Antarctic environments: field data in the design of instrumentation and discovery of novel biotech and biomed compounds

Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are hostile environments characterized by low temperatures, drastic seasonal changes, extreme desert conditions and high ultraviolet light fluxes – the perfect place for the discovery of unique organisms, pathways and proteins with value in biotechnology and biomedical research. Here, we describe the use of environmental transcriptomics coupled with ecological assessments of marine primary producers to uncover novel DNA damage and repair mechanisms in single-celled photosynthetic organisms. These discoveries prompted the design and fabrication of a “LED light engine” to perform specific and controlled differential gene and protein expression of Antarctic isolates under a variety of spectral regimes including high fluxes of UV. This controlled light environment allows for repeatable, quantitative binary experimentation on organisms that posses unique mechanisms and responses to UV or oxidative DNA damage and repair. The results capture novel mechanisms from organisms that are highly adapted to these extreme environments. A high-throughput pipeline of this methodology is a useful tool to reveal valuable information from non-model organisms.