Variations in ocean plankton biodiversity and activity from the equator to the poles
Two “Cell” papers highlight new results from Tara Oceans — a global survey of ocean microbial life. The study led by the Sunagawa lab highlights the role of temperature in explaining the mechanisms by which microbial communities adapt to environmental variation in different regions of the ocean.
Microbial communities in the oceans play key roles in the biogeochemistry, food webs, and climate of our planet. Despite their importance, little is known about how their activity may change in response to environmental variation. In light of ongoing climate change, this represents an important knowledge gap that needs to be addressed. The analysis of hundreds of metagenomes and metatranscriptomes collected during the Tara Oceans expedition enabled the Sunagawa Group to study not only what ocean microbial communities are genomically capable of doing, but also what they are actually doing in different regions of the world’s oceans. The multi-disciplinary study differentiates changes in gene abundance from changes in gene expression in structuring essential functions across the oceans. Notably, their results imply that in polar regions, changes in organismal composition will likely dominate over gene regulatory mechanisms in the response of microbial communities to ocean warming in the Anthropocene.
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