PMEL's Ocean Molecular Ecology (OME) program uses 'Omics tools to tackle global ocean issues. We help lead the implementation of the NOAA 'Omics strategy and the White House's National Aquatic eDNA Strategy to advance NOAA's mission of science and stewardship. We seek to leverage advances in molecular biology to scale biological analyses with physical and chemical processes. Our science aims to characterize the impacts of warming, ocean acidification, and hypoxia on marine life. This allows for characterization of marine ecosystems as they respond to a changing climate.
OME work directly supports NOAA's core missions in numerous ways
- Understand and predict Earth systems by characterizing climate impacts on marine biodiversity.
- Develop technology to improve NOAA science, service, and stewardship by advancing 'Omics approaches.
- Transition results so they are useful to society - we do this by creating open access data dissemination, bioinformatic software, and genetic resources.
- Provide stewardship and maintain sustainability of the Nation's living marine resources, their habitats, interactions, and ecosystems by generating critical biodiversity information that is foundational for climate resilient ecosystem based fisheries management.
NOAA 'Omics Website
PMEL Ocean Molecular Ecology Technical Portal
NOAA 'Omics Technical Portal
What's Happening
The Phycological Society of America’s (PSA) joint meeting with the International Society of Protistology (ISOP) and International Society for Evolutionary Protistology (ISEP) brought together algae, phytoplankton and protist researchers from across the globe. During the meeting, research from carbon dioxide draw-down with kelp farms to important evolutionary questions of protists in the tree of life were presented to an international audience of academic, federal, state, and local government scientists.
Sam Setta presented on phytoplankton changes with temperature and acidification from the West Coast Ocean Acidification (WCOA) 2021 Cruise.... more
Feature Publication
Dorsal fin of a harbor porpoise. Credit: NOAA Fisheries
In collaboration with scientists at NOAA Fisheries, Ocean Molecular Ecology scientist Zack Gold participated in a environmental DNA (eDNA) study focused on the hidden structure of Alaska's harbor porpoise populations. To learn more about the project, read NOAA Fisheries featured story entitled: New Clues Reveal Genetic Diversity among Alaska's Harbor Porpoises.