Congratulations to Astrid Schmidt

On May 24, 2012, Astrid Schmidt from Centre for Ice and Climate and Natural History Museum of Denmark succesfully defended her PhD thesis and obtained the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Astrid Schmidt will continue as postdoc at Centre for Ice and Climate.

Supervisors:
Professor Eske Willerslev, Natural History Museum of Denmark
Associate professor, Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Centre for Ice and Climate

Title and abstract here below:

Full thesis will be up-loaded here as soon as possible.

Ice Core Genetics - uncovering biodiversity from ancient ecosystems in Greenland and Antarctica 

The aim of the thesis was to develop and expand the research field of ancient
DNA in basal ice of ice cores by use of new sequencing and analytical techniques. Large amounts of sequence data required a high demand for verification of the data in
terms of sorting, filtering, error handling as well as contamination control. The experimental and analytical work was used to reconstruct palaeo-ecosystems at two locations in Greenland and at one location in Antarctica.
Ecological and climatic details were assessed from the composition of biodiversity detected by means of aDNA amplification of mini-barcodes and deep sequencing on the GS-FLX sequencing platform.