Microbial diversity in the deep sea and the underexplored "rare biosphere"
- Author(s)
- Mitchell L. Sogin, Hilary G. Morrison, Julie A. Huber, David Mark Welch, Susan M. Huse, Phillip R. Neal, Jesus M. Arrieta, Gerhard J. Herndl
- Abstract
The evolution of marine microbes over billions of years predicts that the composition of microbial communities should be much greater than the published estimates of a few thousand distinct kinds of microbes per liter of seawater. By adopting a massively parallel tag sequencing strategy, we show that bacterial communities of deep water masses of the North Atlantic and diffuse flow hydrothermal vents are one to two orders of magnitude more complex than previously reported for any microbial environment. A relatively small number of different populations dominate all samples, but thousands of low-abundance populations account for most of the observed phylogenetic diversity. This "rare biosphere" is very ancient and may represent a nearly inexhaustible source of genomic innovation. Members of the rare biosphere are highly divergent from each other and, at different times in earth's history, may have had a profound impact on shaping planetary processes.
- Organisation(s)
- Functional and Evolutionary Ecology
- External organisation(s)
- Harvard University, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, University of the Balearic Islands
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)
- Volume
- 103
- Pages
- 12115-12120
- No. of pages
- 6
- ISSN
- 0027-8424
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0605127103
- Publication date
- 08-2006
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 106021 Marine biology
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General
- Sustainable Development Goals
- SDG 14 - Life Below Water
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/microbial-diversity-in-the-deep-sea-and-the-underexplored-rare-biosphere(11e1b0ac-e60b-4dee-a8c8-b59aaac50aaa).html