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National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 32(103), p. 12115-12120, 2006

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0605127103

Metagenomics in Different Habitats, p. 243-252

DOI: 10.1002/9781118010549.ch24

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Microbial diversity in the deep sea and the underexplored “rare biosphere”

Journal article published in 2006 by Mitchell L. Sogin, David Mark Welch, David B. Mark Welch, Hilary G. Morrison ORCID, Julie A. Huber, Susan M. Huse, Phillip R. Neal, Jesus M. Arrieta, Gerhard J. Herndl
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

The evolution of marine microbes over billions of years predicts that the composition of microbial communities should be much greater than the published estimates of a few thousand distinct kinds of microbes per liter of seawater. By adopting a massively parallel tag sequencing strategy, we show that bacterial communities of deep water masses of the North Atlantic and diffuse flow hydrothermal vents are one to two orders of magnitude more complex than previously reported for any microbial environment. A relatively small number of different populations dominate all samples, but thousands of low-abundance populations account for most of the observed phylogenetic diversity. This “rare biosphere” is very ancient and may represent a nearly inexhaustible source of genomic innovation. Members of the rare biosphere are highly divergent from each other and, at different times in earth's history, may have had a profound impact on shaping planetary processes.