Abstract
Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world’s oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits.
Highlights
Ocean Sampling Day OSD is a simultaneous, collaborative, global megasequencing campaign to analyze marine microbial community composition and functional traits on a single day
The first landmark marine metagenome studies were published by the J Craig Venter Institute, beginning with a pilot sampling project in the Sargasso Sea followed by the Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) expedition [2]
The Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project aims to investigate global marine microbial biodiversity and has pioneered the idea to do this on a single orchestrated Ocean Sampling Day (OSD)
Summary
Marine microbes inhabit all marine habitats, are the engines of the ocean’s major biogeochemical cycles, and form the basis of the marine food web [1]. The Tara Ocean project expanded this further by integrating the marine genetic, morphological, and functional biodiversity in its environmental context at global ocean scale and at multiple depths [3]. The Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project aims to investigate global marine microbial biodiversity and has pioneered the idea to do this on a single orchestrated Ocean Sampling Day (OSD). Marine microbes taken on a single day, which we consider complementary to other large-scale sequencing projects. Questions we would like to answer are: (i) what are the important factors (physical-chemical and biological) in structuring biodiversity patterns and range margins, and (ii) are functions associated with heavy metals, antibiotics or fecal indicators correlated with OSD sites exposed to higher human impact? Questions we would like to answer are: (i) what are the important factors (physical-chemical and biological) in structuring biodiversity patterns and range margins, and (ii) are functions associated with heavy metals, antibiotics or fecal indicators correlated with OSD sites exposed to higher human impact? We are confident that the simultaneous collection of samples will result in the discovery of new ecological patterns providing key information towards understanding environmental vulnerability and resilience
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