Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea

2004 Science 4,323 citations

Abstract

We have applied “whole-genome shotgun sequencing” to microbial populations collected en masse on tangential flow and impact filters from seawater samples collected from the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda. A total of 1.045 billion base pairs of nonredundant sequence was generated, annotated, and analyzed to elucidate the gene content, diversity, and relative abundance of the organisms within these environmental samples. These data are estimated to derive from at least 1800 genomic species based on sequence relatedness, including 148 previously unknown bacterial phylotypes. We have identified over 1.2 million previously unknown genes represented in these samples, including more than 782 new rhodopsin-like photoreceptors. Variation in species present and stoichiometry suggests substantial oceanic microbial diversity.

Keywords

Shotgun sequencingBiologySargasso seaMetagenomicsGenomeAbundance (ecology)SeawaterShotgunRelative species abundanceEvolutionary biologyEcologyGeneGeneticsOceanography

MeSH Terms

ArchaeaAtlantic OceanBacteriaBacteriophagesBiodiversityComputational BiologyCyanobacteriaEcosystemEukaryotic CellsGenesArchaealGenesBacterialGenesrRNAGenomeArchaealGenomeBacterialGenomicsMolecular Sequence DataPhotosynthesisPhylogenyPlasmidsRhodopsinRhodopsinsMicrobialSeawaterSequence AnalysisDNAWater Microbiology

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Publication Info

Year
2004
Type
article
Volume
304
Issue
5667
Pages
66-74
Citations
4323
Access
Closed

Social Impact

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

4323
OpenAlex
294
Influential
3320
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Cite This

J. Craig Venter, Karin Remington, John F. Heidelberg et al. (2004). Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea. Science , 304 (5667) , 66-74. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1093857

Identifiers

DOI
10.1126/science.1093857
PMID
15001713

Data Quality

Data completeness: 81%