Functional Metagenomics of Microbial Biodiversity in Norwegian Extreme Environments – fjords, oil reservoirs and the high Arctic

Microbial biodiversity of extreme environments is considered a rich source of new and novel genetic information of potentially high value for different commercial applications. Functional Metagenomics provides advanced tools to access this biodiversity more completely and efficiently than classical bioprospecting approaches. Norway with its special geography in Northern Europe provides many interesting ecological niches with extreme conditions for microbial life to exist, reaching from diverse coastal environments like the fjords, deep subsurface off-shore oil reservoirs, extensive permafrost and glacial regions both on the mainland and the high arctic archipelago of Svalbard, to volcanic regions on the island of Jan Mayen. For many years, our work has been focusing on accessing Norwegian Biodiversity of different, mainly marine environments to discover new and commercially useful traits of both enzymes and bioactive molecules using classical bioprospecting and in more recent years also applying meta-approaches both on natural microbial communities and comprehensive in-house strain collections from earlier samplings. Comparative metagenome-based studies of hot oil reservoirs have provided unprecedented insight into microbial diversity and variability in these high temperature and pressure environments, and revealed thermostable enzymes of different classes potentially useful in industrial processes. A comprehensive strain collection of rare Actinobacteria from different locations in the Trondheimsfjord is currently being screened for novel bioactive gene clusters using Functional Metagenomics tools. New sampling campaigns of soils and glaciers in Northern Norway and on Svalbard have been initiated for new Functional Metagenomics guided discoveries from Norwegian biodiversity in the years to come.