Global Ocean Microbiome

In the ocean, microbial communities are dominant drivers of biogeochemical processes and form the basis of a complex food web that is fueled by the fixation of carbon dioxide by oxygenic photosynthesis. Yet drawing a global picture of their distribution, diversity and function, and understanding the ecological determinants of their composition and response to environmental change remain grand challenges. We collaborate in several multi-​national projects, including Tara Oceans, Tara Pacific and Traversing European coastlines (TREC), that have systematically collected microbiome samples across all major oceans.

Tara Oceans: First results of the project were highlighted in a special issue of Science on ocean plankton. For more information and media coverage, see also the external page press release and features:

• in scientific journals: external page Science, external page Nature, external page Cell, external page Nat Rev Microbiol
• in the press: external page NY Times, external page BBC News, external page Le Monde, external page Spiegel Online
• in the media: ZDF - heute journal (German), external page SWR - Natuerlich! (German)

One important finding was that in upper open ocean layers, temperature appears to be the strongest determinant of microbial community compositions (external page Sunagawa et al., 2015). We further sought to investigate how microbial communities would adjust to environmental changes at global scale. Our results suggest that their activity would be most strongly affected by compositional changes in Arctic waters, where the rate of seawater warming is, compared to the rest of the ocean, disproportionally high (external page Salazar et al., 2019).

More information can be found in the external page press release and features:

• in scientific journals: external page Nat Rev Microbiol
• in the press: external page Le Temps
• in the media: external page CellPress & external page ETH Zürich

The work of Tara Oceans between 2009-2019 has been reviewed in external page Sunagawa et al. (2020) and a list of publications is available [here].

Ocean Microbiomics: In our most recent work, we explored the biosynthetic potential of ocean microbial communities at global scale (external page Paoli et al., 2022). To this end, we developed the external page Ocean Microbiomics Database, an open genomic web resource of annotated single-cell, metagenome-assembled and reference genomes. Mining this data treasure trove, we identified not only previously unknown ocean microbial species, but also a biosyntetically diverse family of bacteria we named "Eudoremicrobiaceae" as well as novel, biochemically characterized enzymes and natural products.

See also the press release and features:

• in scientific journals: external page Nature, external page Nat Rev Microbiol, external page Nat Rev Genet
• in the media: external page Radio Canada
  

Tara Pacific: This project focuses on coral reef organisms and the environment they inhabit in the Pacific Ocean. An overview of the associated expedition and the scientific project can be found [external page here] and [external page here].