Do you dare to discover new species and get to know the required steps to characterize it? The two-week excellence program Barcelona International Youth Science Challenge (BIYSC) of Catalunya-La Pedrera Foundation offers you the opportunity to work on the scientific challenge “Uncovering the hidden diversity of the oceans” using cutting edge techniques at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE-CSIC-UPF). Núria Ros, Predoctoral Researcher at the IBE and coordinator of the project, describe us her experience in BIYSC together with Sana Aijaz, participant in BIYSC 2016.

Scientists at the IBE often receive samples from all over the world containing potential new species. In this case they have received a new specimen from the Arctic Ocean, which was isolated from the digestive tract of the filter feeding mussel in a group of islands of Canada. The main goal of this project is to characterize this unknown marine microorganism by using fluorescence microscopy imaging in parallel to molecular biology techniques and computational biology tools. The students will learn how to culture, describe and analyze in an evolutionary context a new lineage.

If you are curious and enthusiastic about scientific research and the study of biodiversity, and if you are eager to uncover a new marine species that no one has seen before, this is your project!

Check all the information at www.biysc.org.