Thriving Antarctic ecosystems found in wake of recently detached iceberg
Reports and Proceedings
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 30-Apr-2025 22:08 ET (1-May-2025 02:08 GMT/UTC)
When an iceberg nearly the size of Chicago broke away in January from a massive floating glacier attached to the Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet, an international team of scientists aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor (too) became the first to investigate an area of the seafloor never before accessible to humans. In the pristine icy waters, they discovered a vibrant, thriving ecosystem of marine life, captured for the first time on film.
The research field of "cellular IRESes" lay dormant for decades, as there was no uniform standard of reliable methods for the clear characterization of these starting points for the ribosome-mediated control of gene expression. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn, in collaboration with Stanford University in California (USA), have now developed a toolbox as a new gold standard for this field. They hope to discover strong IRES elements that are directly relevant for synthetic biology and for application in emerging mRNA therapeutics. The results of their work have been published in The EMBO Journal.
Scientists have shown for the first time that Antarctic krill show a stereotypical reaction in the presence of guano from Adélie penguins: they swim faster and make more turns over greater angles. It is unknown to what kind of water-borne chemical cues they respond, but the authors speculate that this behavior might be a universal escape response to the excreta of predators, irrespective of species.
The invasive Pacific oyster have adapted to life in less salty seas and are reproducing off the coast of Skåne, although having been there for less than ten years. This discovery by researchers from the University of Gothenburg suggests that the oysters could colonise the western Baltic Sea in the future.