Diatoms are photosynthesising algae, they have a siliceous skeleton (frustule) and are found in ... [+]
Within every drop of seawater lives a mixture of teeny-tiny organisms, like bacteria and viruses, collectively known as ‘microbes’.
According to new research published in Cell by scientists at Maine’s Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, the degree of microbial diversity within the ocean is perhaps more staggering than originally thought. In the largest study ever conducted on individual cells, over 12,000 microbial genomes were analyzed to build a massive database, dubbed the Global Ocean Reference Genomes Tropics (GORG-Tropics).
The samples were collected from the tropics and subtropics, representing about two-thirds of the world’s ocean. To the researcher’s surprise, every one of the 12,000 cells they analyzed had a unique genome - no two cells were identical. What’s more, most of the microbes were so dissimilar from all the other microbes analyzed that they were considered to be different species altogether.
A summary of the new study published in Cell by researchers from the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean ... [+]
The researchers also analyzed the microbial diversity within a single teaspoon of water from the Sargasso Sea. An astonishing 6,000 cells were captured, analyzed, and added to the growing database.
Of all the genes discovered within the Sargasso Sea sample, at least one-fifth were genes also found in the tropics and subtropics. According to these microbial experts, these large portion of shared genes between the Sargasso Sea and the tropics despite immense microbial diversity indicates how effective ocean currents are at mixing microbial life around the globe.
“In the same way that we think of New York City as a melting pot, every teaspoon of the ocean is a microbial melting pot,” said Ramunas Stepanauskas, Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow. “The ocean is huge, and it's amazing how complex ecological and evolutionary processes take place in each tiny drop.”
Map of the Sargasso Sea.
With the help of cutting-edge genome analysis technology, this study sequenced more microbes than all studies prior to 2013, combined. With an abundance of information, new discoveries have followed. For example, Stepanauskas’ team discovered a group of bacteria, known as proteobacteria, previously not known to have photosynthetic, or light harnessing, capabilities.
“Genetic information can teach us a lot about ecology, and these may be photosynthetic organisms that were unnoticed before,” said Maria Pachiadaki, a former Bigelow Laboratory postdoctoral researcher and lead author of this study. “If experiments confirm what the genes suggest, this is an important microbial group to consider in ocean carbon studies.”
With less than 1% of marine microorganisms proving possible to grow and study in a laboratory setting, databases like GORG-Tropics are essential for advancing our understanding of microbial capabilities.
Senior Research Scientist Ramunas Stepanauskas holds a sample of Sargasso Sea water before analysis ... [+]
In collaboration with researchers at the University of California San Diego, this research team also identified microbes that could fuel novel biotechnology applications. By tracking which microbes are able to produce certain chemicals, the GORG-Tropics database may help fast-track future discoveries of new antibiotics or cancer-fighting medicines.
With a database of this size, the potential for discovery continues. Stepanauskas and his team of researchers will continue to search for more discoveries to further reveal the hidden microbial diversity of the ocean, and in turn, the intricacies of how the ocean functions.
“One of our main goals with the GORG initiative was to produce a powerful resource for the marine microbiology research community,” said Julia Brown, a bioinformatician at Bigelow Laboratory and a study author. “We hope that scientists will be able to use this dataset in follow-up studies to answer questions no one has even thought of yet.”
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