A global ocean atlas of eukaryotic genes

Quentin Carradec (1) , Eric Pelletier (1) , Corinne da Silva (2) , Adriana A. Alberti (3, 4) , Yoann Seeleuthner (4, 3) , Romain Blanc-Mathieu (5) , Gipsi Lima-Mendez (6) , Fabio Rocha (7) , Leila Tirichine (7) , Karine Labadie (3, 4) , Amos Kirilovsky (7, 3, 4) , Alexis Bertrand (2) , Stefan Engelen (2) , Mohammed-Amin Madoui (2) , Raphaël Méheust (7) , Julie Poulain (3, 4) , Sarah Romac (8) , Daniel Richter (9, 8) , Genki Yoshikawa (5) , Céline Dimier (7, 8) , Stefanie Kandels-Lewis (10) , Marc Picheral (11) , Sarah Searson (12) , Olivier Jaillon (3, 4) , Jean-Marc Aury (2) , Eric Karsenti (7) , Matthew Sullivan (13) , Shinichi Sunagawa (14) , Peer Bork (14) , Fabrice Not (15, 8) , Pascal Hingamp (16) , Jeroen J. Raes (6) , Lionel Guidi (11) , Hiroyuki Ogata (17, 5) , Colomban de Vargas (18, 8) , Daniele Iudicone (19) , Chris Bowler (7) , Patrick Wincker (1) , Jean Weissenbach (3, 4)

1 UMR 8030 - Génomique métabolique
2 LBGB - Laboratoire de Bioinformatique pour la Génomique et la Biodiversité
3 GENOSCOPE - Genoscope - Centre national de séquençage [Evry]
4 JACOB - Institut de Biologie François JACOB
5 Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University
6 KU Leuven - Catholic University of Leuven = Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
7 IBENS - Institut de biologie de l'ENS Paris
8 ADMM - Adaptation et diversité en milieu marin
9 Hasso Plattner Institute [Potsdam, Germany]
10 EMBL - European Molecular Biology Laboratory [Heidelberg]
11 LOV - Laboratoire d'océanographie de Villefranche
12 UH - University of Hawai'i [Honolulu]
13 OSU - The Ohio State University [Columbus]
14 EMBL - European Molecular Biology Laboratory [Grenoble]
15 DIPO - Diversité et Interactions au sein du Plancton Océanique
16 MIO - Institut méditerranéen d'océanologie
17 Kyoto University
18 EPEP - Evolution des Protistes et Ecosystèmes Pélagiques
19 SZN - Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn

While our knowledge about the roles of microbes and viruses in the ocean has increased tremendously due to recent advances in genomics and metagenomics, research on marine microbial eukaryotes and zooplankton has benefited much less from these new technologies because of their larger genomes, their enormous diversity, and largely unexplored physiologies. Here, we use a metatranscriptomics approach to capture expressed genes in open ocean Tara Oceans stations across four organismal size fractions. The individual sequence reads cluster into 116 million unigenes representing the largest reference collection of eukaryotic transcripts from any single biome. The catalog is used to unveil functions expressed by eukaryotic marine plankton, and to assess their functional biogeography. Almost half of the sequences have no similarity with known proteins, and a great number belong to new gene families with a restricted distribution in the ocean. Overall, the resource provides the foundations for exploring the roles of marine eukaryotes in ocean ecology and biogeochemistry.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]; Biodiversité et Ecologie; Biodiversité

Quentin Carradec, Eric Pelletier, Corinne da Silva, Adriana A. Alberti, Yoann Seeleuthner, et al.. A global ocean atlas of eukaryotic genes. Nature Communications, 2018, 9 (1), pp.373. ⟨10.1038/s41467-017-02342-1⟩. ⟨cea-01874711⟩