The world's oceans contain a complex mixture of micro-organisms that are for the most part, uncharacterized both genetically and biochemically. We report here a metagenomic study of the marine planktonic microbiota in which surface (mostly marine) water samples were analyzed as part of the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition. These samples, collected across a several-thousand km transect from the North Atlantic through the Panama Canal and ending in the South Pacific yielded an extensive dataset consisting of 7.7 million sequencing reads (6.3 billion bp). Though a few major microbial clades dominate the planktonic marine niche, the dataset contains great diversity with 85% of the assembled sequence and 57% of the unassembled data being unique at a 98% sequence identity cutoff. Using the metadata associated with each sample and sequencing library, we developed new comparative genomic and assembly methods. One comparative genomic method, termed “fragment recruitment,” addressed questions of genome structure, evolution, and taxonomic or phylogenetic diversity, as well as the biochemical diversity of genes and gene families. A second method, termed “extreme assembly,” made possible the assembly and reconstruction of large segments of abundant but clearly nonclonal organisms. Within all abundant populations analyzed, we found extensive intra-ribotype diversity in several forms: (1) extensive sequence variation within orthologous regions throughout a given genome; despite coverage of individual ribotypes approaching 500-fold, most individual sequencing reads are unique; (2) numerous changes in gene content some with direct adaptive implications; and (3) hypervariable genomic islands that are too variable to assemble. The intra-ribotype diversity is organized into genetically isolated populations that have overlapping but independent distributions, implying distinct environmental preference. We present novel methods for measuring the genomic similarity between metagenomic samples and show how they may be grouped into several community types. Specific functional adaptations can be identified both within individual ribotypes and across the entire community, including proteorhodopsin spectral tuning and the presence or absence of the phosphate-binding gene PstS. Marine microbes remain elusive and mysterious, even though they are the most abundant life form in the ocean, form the base of the marine food web, and drive energy and nutrient cycling. We know so little about the vast majority of microbes because only a small percentage can be cultivated and studied in the lab. Here we report on the Global Ocean Sampling expedition, an environmental metagenomics project that aims to shed light on the role of marine microbes by sequencing their DNA without first needing to isolate individual organisms. A total of 41 different samples were taken from a wide variety of aquatic habitats collected over 8,000 km. The resulting 7.7 million sequencing reads provide an unprecedented look at the incredible diversity and heterogeneity in naturally occurring microbial populations. We have developed new bioinformatic methods to reconstitute large portions of both cultured and uncultured microbial genomes. Organism diversity is analyzed in relation to sampling locations and environmental pressures. Taken together, these data and analyses serve as a foundation for greatly expanding our understanding of individual microbial lineages and their evolution, the nature of marine microbial communities, and how they are impacted by and impact our world.

Marine N₂ fixing microorganisms, termed diazotrophs, are a key functional group in marine pelagic ecosystems. The biological fixation of dinitrogen (N₂) to bioavailable nitrogen provides an important new source of nitrogen for pelagic marine ecosystems and influences primary productivity and organic matter export to the deep ocean. As one of a series of efforts to collect biomass and rates specific to different phytoplankton functional groups, we have constructed a database on diazotrophic organisms in the global pelagic upper ocean by compiling about 12 000 direct field measurements of cyanobacterial diazotroph abundances (based on microscopic cell counts or qPCR assays targeting the nifH genes) and N₂ fixation rates. Biomass conversion factors are estimated based on cell sizes to convert abundance data to diazotrophic biomass. The database is limited spatially, lacking large regions of the ocean especially in the Indian Ocean. The data are approximately log-normal distributed, and large variances exist in most sub-databases with non-zero values differing 5 to 8 orders of magnitude. Reporting the geometric mean and the range of one geometric standard error below and above the geometric mean, the pelagic N₂ fixation rate in the global ocean is estimated to be 62 (52–73) Tg N yr⁻¹ and the pelagic diazotrophic biomass in the global ocean is estimated to be 2.1 (1.4–3.1) Tg C from cell counts and to 89 (43–150) Tg C from nifH-based abundances. Reporting the arithmetic mean and one standard error instead, these three global estimates are 140 ± 9.2 Tg N yr⁻¹, 18 ± 1.8 Tg C and 590 ± 70 Tg C, respectively. Uncertainties related to biomass conversion factors can change the estimate of geometric mean pelagic diazotrophic biomass in the global ocean by about ±70%. It was recently established that the most commonly applied method used to measure N₂ fixation has underestimated the true rates. As a result, one can expect that future rate measurements will shift the mean N₂ fixation rate upward and may result in significantly higher estimates for the global N₂ fixation. The evolving database can nevertheless be used to study spatial and temporal distributions and variations of marine N₂ fixation, to validate geochemical estimates and to parameterize and validate biogeochemical models, keeping in mind that future rate measurements may rise in the future. The database is stored in PANGAEA (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.774851).

The members of the Phyllostomidae, the New-World leaf-nosed family of bats, show a remarkable evolutionary diversification of dietary strategies including insectivory, as the ancestral trait, followed by appearance of carnivory and plant-based diets such as nectarivory and frugivory. Here we explore the microbiome composition of different feeding specialists: insectivore Macrotus waterhousii, sanguivore Desmodus rotundus, nectarivores Leptonycteris yerbabuenae and Glossophaga soricina, and frugivores Carollia perspicillata and Artibeus jamaicensis. The V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene from three intestinal regions of three individuals per species was amplified and community composition and structure was analyzed with α and β diversity metrics. Bats with plant-based diets had low diversity microbiomes, whereas the sanguivore D. rotundus and insectivore M. waterhousii had the most diverse microbiomes. There were no significant differences in microbiome composition between different intestine regions within each individual. Plant-based feeders showed less specificity in their microbiome compositions, whereas animal-based specialists, although more diverse overall, showed a more clustered arrangement of their intestinal bacterial components. The main characteristics defining microbiome composition in phyllostomids were species and feeding strategy. This study shows how differences in feeding strategies contributed to the development of different intestinal microbiomes in Phyllostomidae.

Cyanobacteria have had a pivotal role in the history of life on Earth being the first organisms to perform oxygenic photosynthesis, which changed the atmospheric chemistry and allowed the evolution of aerobic Eukarya. Chloroplasts are the cellular organelles of photoautotrophic eukaryotes in which most portions of photosynthesis occur. Although the initial suggestion that cyanobacteria are the ancestors of chloroplasts was greeted with skepticism, the idea is now widely accepted. Here we attempt to resolve and date the cyanobacterial ancestry of the chloroplast using phylogenetic analysis and molecular clocks. We found that chloroplasts form a monophyletic lineage, are most closely related to subsection-I, N₂-fixing unicellular cyanobacteria (Order Chroococcales), and heterocyst-forming Order Nostocales cyanobacteria are their sister group. Nostocales and Chroococcales appeared during the Paleoproterozoic and chloroplasts appeared in the mid-Proterozoic. The capability of N₂ fixation in cyanobacteria may have appeared only once during the late Archaean and early Proterozoic eons. Furthermore, we found that oxygen-evolving cyanobacteria could have appeared in the Archaean. Our results suggest that a free-living cyanobacterium with the capacity to store starch through oxygenic CO₂ fixation, and to fix atmospheric N₂, would be a very important intracellular acquisition, which, as can be recounted today from several lines of evidence, would have become the chloroplast by endosymbiosis.

N ₂ -fixing proteobacteria (α and γ) and unicellular cyanobacteria are common in both the tropical North Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In near-surface waters proteobacterial nifH transcripts were present during both night and day while unicellular cyanobacterial nifH transcripts were present during the nighttime only, suggesting separation of N ₂ fixation and photosynthesis by unicellular cyanobacteria. Phylogenetic relationships among unicellular cyanobacteria from both oceans were determined after sequencing of a conserved region of 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) of cyanobacteria, and results showed that they clustered together, regardless of the ocean of origin. However, sequencing of nifH transcripts of unicellular cyanobacteria from both oceans showed that they clustered separately. This suggests that unicellular cyanobacteria from the tropical North Atlantic and subtropical North Pacific share a common ancestry (16S rDNA) and that potential unicellular N ₂ fixers have diverged ( nifH ). N ₂ fixation rates for unicellular bacterioplankton (including small cyanobacteria) from both oceans were determined in situ according to the acetylene reduction and ¹⁵ N ₂ protocols. The results showed that rates of fixation by bacterioplankton can be almost as high as those of fixation by the colonial N ₂ -fixing marine cyanobacteria Trichodesmium spp. in the tropical North Atlantic but that rates are much lower in the subtropical North Pacific.