1. Marine biofilms constitute a bank of hidden microbial diversity and functional potential
- Author
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Bite Pei, Nicole S. Webster, Chun Kit Tam, Vladimir B. Bajic, Hongbin Liu, Ruojun Wang, Yongxin Li, Yanhong Lu, Ho Yin Chiang, Weipeng Zhang, Pei-Yuan Qian, He Fu, Jin Sun, Pok Man Leung, Wei Ding, and Salim Bougouffa
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Microorganism ,Microbial diversity ,Science ,Biodiversity ,General Physics and Astronomy ,02 engineering and technology ,Biology ,Genome ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Article ,03 medical and health sciences ,Seawater ,14. Life underwater ,lcsh:Science ,Ecological niche ,Multidisciplinary ,Ecology ,Phylum ,fungi ,Biofilm ,General Chemistry ,Plankton ,respiratory system ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,030104 developmental biology ,13. Climate action ,Biofilms ,Metagenome ,lcsh:Q ,CRISPR-Cas Systems ,0210 nano-technology ,human activities - 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., Previous surveys of global ocean microbial diversity have focused on planktonic microbes. Here, Zhang et al. use metagenomics to study biofilm-forming marine microbes, increasing the known microbial diversity in the oceans by more than 20% and revealing new biosynthetic gene clusters and CRISPR-Cas systems.
- Published
- 2019