Capturing Arctic change: Advanced imaging and single-cell phenotyping of phytoplankton diversity in warming waters

The SUBCELLARCTIC project aims to use advanced imaging techniques to reveal the phenotypic diversity and adaptive strategies of phytoplankton in the context of global warming in the Arctic.

Leveraging the Tara Polar Station as a sampling platform, the project will develop novel X-ray imaging methods to visualise phytoplankton within native sea ice core habitats, establish a biobank of chemically fixed Arctic samples for multiple imaging modalities (high-content microscopy, electron microscopy, expansion microscopy, phenogenomics), and map bacterial-diatom interactions in ecologically critical species. By combining cutting-edge EMBL imaging expertise with Arctic field sampling, this project will provide unprecedented morphological insights into how foundational polar microbes respond to rapid environmental change.

Objectives:

1. New methods for phytoplankton imaging in sea ice cores
2. An imaging biobank from extreme environments
3. Chaetoceros interactions in Arctic waters

During the tests done in the North of the Baltic Sea, close to Oulu, during the winter 2025, Chaetoceros could already be observed in interactions with different partners. At that time, the sea was already covered with a few-centimeters thick layer of ice.