Bringing the Invisible to Light: Bigelow Scientists Find Unexpected Viral Members of Ocean Community

With a novel high-throughput genomic analysis workflow powered by Atrandi’s Semi-Permeable Capsule technology, scientists glean new insights from single cells in environmental samples

At the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, scientists have a special mission: to study the health of our precious oceans and use those discoveries to build a better future for all life on Earth. They carry out this work through several pioneering labs at the institute’s coastal campus in East Boothbay, Maine, in the USA.

A central hub for innovation at the institute is the Single Cell Genomic Center (SCGC). Launched in 2009 by Ramunas Stepanauskas, a senior research scientist, the center was the first in the world to focus entirely on single-cell genomics for characterizing microbes and microbial communities. Today, the SCGC has three key functions: 1) method development to spur technical innovation in this field; 2) experimental research focused on better understanding ocean environments and other ecosystems; and 3) providing services to process samples submitted from scientists around the world.

Recently, SCGC scientists published results in Nature Microbiology from an exciting study that deployed a new single-cell sequencing method and revealed novel insights about viral populations in seawater. The work was enabled by a collaboration with Atrandi Biosciences and the company’s unique Semi-Permeable Capsule (SPC) technology.

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