Biodiversity and Gene Expression of Microbial Communities in the Canadian Arctic

As part of the ArcticNet expeditions (http://www.arcticnet.ulaval.ca) on the CCGS Amundsen in 2008-2019, we collected water samples from stations throughout the Canadian Arctic. Cruise tracks varied from year to year, but always included a transect of northern Baffin Bay, and sometimes sampling in Lancaster Sound, the Beaufort Sea, and/or along the east coast of Baffin Island. The sampling period ranged from summer to autumn. Samples were collected by CTD-rosette from 2-8 depths corresponding to water column features such as surface water, the subsurface chlorophyll maximum, the nitracline, or Atlantic Water. To collect samples for DNA/RNA, water was filtered through 3-µm filters and 0.2 µm cartridges, which were conserved in a buffer at -80°C. These have been used for high-throughput sequencing for amplicon-based surveys, metagenomics, and other molecular techniques. Samples for flow cytometry (to enumerate bacterial and/or pigmented cells), microscopy (with a fluorescent DAPI stain, or using FNU preservative for identifying larger cells), fluorescent in-situ hybridization (another microscopy technique), chlorophyll a (to quantify photosynthetic organisms), and HPLC pigment analysis (to identify different algae taxa), were also collected. Samples from which nucleic acids have been extracted and sequenced in many projects. Samples from which nucleic acids have been extracted and sequenced can be found in the GenBank Short Read Archive under the project accession numbers PRJNA202104, PRJNA283142, PRJNA283296, PRJNA383398, and SRX037894-SRX037896