title: Genetic Diversity Affects the Daily Transcriptional Oscillations of Marine Microbial Populations.
abstract: Marine microbial communities are genetically diverse but have robust synchronized daily transcriptional patterns at the genus level that are similar across a wide variety of oceanic regions. We developed a microarray-inspired gene-centric approach to resolve transcription of closely-related but distinct strains/ecotypes in high-throughput sequence data. Applying this approach to the existing metatranscriptomics datasets collected from two different oceanic regions, we found unique and variable patterns of transcription by individual taxa within the abundant picocyanobacteria Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, the alpha Proteobacterium Pelagibacter and the eukaryotic picophytoplankton Ostreococcus. The results demonstrate that marine microbial taxa respond differentially to variability in space and time in the ocean. These intra-genus individual transcriptional patterns underlie whole microbial community responses, and the approach developed here facilitates deeper insights into microbial population dynamics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ocean Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Irina N
authors.initials: IN
authors.lastname: Shilova
authors.affiliation: Department of Ocean Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Julie C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Robidart
authors.affiliation: School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of America.
authors.forename: Edward F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: DeLong
authors.affiliation: Department of Ocean Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jonathan P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Zehr
mesh_terms: D020561:Alphaproteobacteria / Q000235:genetics; D000460:Chlorophyta / Q000235:genetics; D004261:DNA Replication; D017753:Ecosystem; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010802:Phylogeny; D011157:Population Dynamics; D048929:Prochlorococcus / Q000235:genetics; D012623:Seawater / Q000382:microbiology*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012984:Software; D046940:Synechococcus / Q000235:genetics; D014158:Transcription, Genetic; D059467:Transcriptome; D014871:Water Microbiology