Metagenomics reveals our incomplete knowledge of global diversity

New perspectives in benthic deep-sea microbial ecology

Deep-sea ecosystems represent the largest and most remote biome of the biosphere. They play a fundamental role in global biogeochemical cycles and their functions allow existence of life on our planet. In the last 20 years enormous progress has been made in the investigation of deep-sea microbes, but the knowledge of the microbial ecology of the soft bottoms (representing >90% of the deep-sea f...

An integrated metagenomics pipeline for strain profiling reveals novel patterns of transmission and global biogeography of bacteria

Marine Polysaccharide Sulfatases

Polysaccharides are the most abundant and the most complex organic molecules in the ocean. In contrast to land polysaccharides, many marine polysaccharides are highly sulfated; in particular, the cell walls of macroalgae harbor a high diversity of sulfated polysaccharides (carrageenans, agarans, fucoidans, ulvans, etc.). These sulfated polysaccharides, biosynthesized by macroalgal primary produ...

Code and context: Prochlorococcus as a model for cross-scale biology.

Prochlorococcus is a simple cyanobacterium that is abundant throughout large regions of the oceans, and has become a useful model for studying the nature and regulation of biological diversity across all scales of complexity. Recent work has revealed that environmental factors such as light, nutrients and predation influence diversity in different ways, changing our image of the structure and d...

Metagenomics Reveals a Novel Virophage Population in a Tibetan Mountain Lake

Virophages are parasites of giant viruses that infect eukaryotic organisms and may affect the ecology of inland water ecosystems. Despite the potential ecological impact, limited information is available on the distribution, diversity, and hosts of virophages in ecosystems. Metagenomics revealed that virophages were widely distributed in inland waters with various environmental characteristics ...