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Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea
J. Craig Venter,1*Karin Remington,1John F. Heidelberg,3Aaron L. Halpern,2Doug Rusch,2Jonathan A. Eisen,3Dongying Wu,3Ian Paulsen,3Karen E. Nelson,3William Nelson,3Derrick E. Fouts,3Samuel Levy,2Anthony H. Knap,6Michael W. Lomas,6Ken Nealson,5Owen White,3Jeremy Peterson,3Jeff Hoffman,1Rachel Parsons,6Holly Baden-Tillson,1Cynthia Pfannkoch,1Yu-Hui Rogers,4Hamilton O. Smith1
We have applied "whole-genome shotgun sequencing" to microbialpopulations collected en masse on tangential flow and impactfilters from seawater samples collected from the Sargasso Seanear Bermuda. A total of 1.045 billion base pairs of nonredundantsequence was generated, annotated, and analyzed to elucidatethe gene content, diversity, and relative abundance of the organismswithin these environmental samples. These data are estimatedto derive from at least 1800 genomic species based on sequencerelatedness, including 148 previously unknown bacterial phylotypes.We have identified over 1.2 million previously unknown genesrepresented in these samples, including more than 782 new rhodopsin-likephotoreceptors. Variation in species present and stoichiometrysuggests substantial oceanic microbial diversity.
1 The Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, 1901 Research Boulevard, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. 2 The Center for the Advancement of Genomics, 1901 Research Boulevard, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. 3 The Institute for Genomic Research, 9712 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. 4 The J. Craig Venter Science Foundation Joint Technology Center, 5 Research Place, Rockville, MD 20850, USA. 5 University of Southern California, 223 Science Hall, Los Angeles, CA 900890740, USA. 6 Bermuda Biological Station for Research, Inc., 17 Biological Lane, St George GE 01, Bermuda.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jcventer{at}tcag.org
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