Small‐organelle‐enriched metagenomics: An improved method for environmental DNA‐based identification of marine plankton

Understanding marine biodiversity is of paramount importance. Recently, we developed a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-free small-organelle-enriched metagenomics (SoEM) method with enhanced performance in species identification compared to multimarker DNA metabarcoding. However, this has problem applicability for field surveys, example, the need filter large volumes seawater. Here, propose an improved version original SoEM (SoEM pioneer [SoEM-pv]) assessment. There are three major contributions proposed v1.0): (1) presentation PCR-free protocols seawater environmental analysis; (2) provision widely applicable optimal extraction that can be applied small (approximately 2 liters) coastal waters; and (3) description easy-to-use bioinformatics pipelines analysis data. To validate accuracy sensitivity v1.0, evaluated taxonomic capture capacity from samples found that, given sample volume liters, v1.0 had approximately 5- 10-fold higher yield than SoEM-pv; highest diversity other methods, 1.6-fold PCR-based multi-locus metabarcoding 1.2-fold shotgun metagenomic sequencing; number identified did not increase proportionally increasing size 20 liters. We suggest promising feasible eukaryotic studies expect it welcomed by biological oceanographers resource managers.