Abstract
Recent big data analyses have illuminated marine microbial diversity from a global perspective, focusing on planktonic microorganisms. Here, we analyze 2.5 terabases of newly sequenced datasets and the Tara Oceans metagenomes to study the diversity of biofilm-forming marine microorganisms. We identify more than 7,300 biofilm-forming ‘species’ that are undetected in seawater analyses, increasing the known microbial diversity in the oceans by more than 20%, and provide evidence for differentiation across oceanic niches. Generation of a gene distribution profile reveals a functional core across the biofilms, comprised of genes from a variety of microbial phyla that may play roles in stress responses and microbe-microbe interactions. Analysis of 479 genomes reconstructed from the biofilm metagenomes reveals novel biosynthetic gene clusters and CRISPR-Cas systems. Our data highlight the previously underestimated ocean microbial diversity, and allow mining novel microbial lineages and gene resources.
Highlights
Recent big data analyses have illuminated marine microbial diversity from a global perspective, focusing on planktonic microorganisms
67 metagenomes of epipelagic seawater collected from around the world were downloaded from the Tara Oceans study[4]
The ocean microbial reference gene catalog (OM-RGC) catalog generated by Tara Oceans revolutionized our understanding of oceanic microbial diversity and functional potential and provided a platform to resolve the ecological roles of the microbial community. 16S miTags derived from the Tara Oceans metagenomic datasets mapped to a total of 35,650 OTUs, with the rate of new gene detection only 0.01% by the end of seawater sampling[4]
Summary
Recent big data analyses have illuminated marine microbial diversity from a global perspective, focusing on planktonic microorganisms. A recent study investigated biofilms formed on marine plastic debris, and pointed out that microbes attached to these plastic fragments are different from the surrounding seawater[11] These insights have been primarily derived from localized analyses, and the extent to which biofilm-forming microbes contribute to global microbial diversity is unknown. The principle that ‘everything is everywhere, but the environment selects’[16] posits that all microorganisms in the ocean are globally distributed but that in any given environment most of the species are only latently present This notion has been supported by analysis of microbial communities from environments as varied as the English Channel[17] to Atlantic hydrothermal vents[18]
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