MIME

Marine microorganisms form the basis of our marine food web in addition to driving fundamental nutrient cycles and atmospheric processes. There are large gaps in knowledge concerning marine microorganism diversity, distribution and abundance, not the least in Icelandic waters. This makes it very difficult to establish a baseline against which to monitor, measure and potentially predict vital ecological changes in the ocean in relation to climate change.  
The Microbes in the Icelandic Marine Environment (MIME) project aims to investigate the abundance, diversity, function and distribution of prokaryotes, eukaryotic protists and viruses at oceanographic stations surrounding Iceland. Thousands of seawater samples have already been collected over a 7 year period (2010 to 2017) from these stations and will be processed using a wide range of complementary methods: flow cytometry, dynamic imaging, stable-isotope probing, new generation sequencing and cultivation methods.