title: Evidence for a persistent microbial seed bank throughout the global ocean.
abstract: Do bacterial taxa demonstrate clear endemism, like macroorganisms, or can one site's bacterial community recapture the total phylogenetic diversity of the world's oceans? Here we compare a deep bacterial community characterization from one site in the English Channel (L4-DeepSeq) with 356 datasets from the International Census of Marine Microbes (ICoMM) taken from around the globe (ranging from marine pelagic and sediment samples to sponge-associated environments). At the L4-DeepSeq site, increasing sequencing depth uncovers greater phylogenetic overlap with the global ICoMM data. This site contained 31.7-66.2% of operational taxonomic units identified in a given ICoMM biome. Extrapolation of this overlap suggests that 1.93 × 10(11) sequences from the L4 site would capture all ICoMM bacterial phylogenetic diversity. Current technology trends suggest this limit may be attainable within 3 y. These results strongly suggest the marine biosphere maintains a previously undetected, persistent microbial seed bank.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Program in Biophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: Sean M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Gibbons
authors.forename: J Gregory
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Caporaso
authors.forename: Meg
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pirrung
authors.forename: Dawn
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Field
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Knight
authors.forename: Jack A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gilbert
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria; D044822:Biodiversity; D054892:Metagenome; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D010802:Phylogeny; D014871:Water Microbiology