Recovery of Evolutionary Lineages from Ice Cores (RELIC)
The RELIC project (Recovery of Evolutionary Lineages from Ice Cores) consists of sampling ice core FRE98-4 from the Upper Fremont Glacier in the Wind River Range of Wyoming, USA. Six ice cores of 648 to 918 g were aseptically sampled, cleaned, melted, filter-concentrated, and DNA extracted by 3 methods: direct environmental DNA (eDNA), FastDNA SPiN for Soil (FP), or a modified Promega Wizard HMW protocol (HMW). DNA was amplified with a Takara Bio PicoPLEX Single Cell WGA Kit and those samples with fragment sizes >400 bp and DNA concentrations >10 ng/microliter were sequenced to identify cryo-preserved metagenomes within the glacial ice.