J-DESC Core School Deep Life Course

The existence of a vast and diverse microscopic biomass in the subsurface world, including the seafloor, is one of the important milestone results that have been revealed by drilling geoscience projects, including ODP, IODP (IODP³), and ICDP. However, these results have been supported by continuous technological development. Life science analysis techniques are usually applied mainly to samples that contain high concentrations of life (such as living organisms themselves) or samples where it is relatively easy to concentrate life, such as seawater, and are extremely difficult to apply to subsurface samples that contain a large amount of non-living particles, including soil.

The J-DESC Core School Deep Life course aims to learn microbial cell detection skills using sediment cores as a subject, and will provide small-group practical training to acquire basic knowledge for life analysis in subsurface environments and techniques that can be applied to various environmental samples.

The venue, Kochi Core Center, is also positioned as the core repository for IODP/IODP³, and also functions as a base for analysis centered on core samples.