Tag: Marine bacteria

I just got word from BMC Genomics that my most recent paper has just been published (in provisional form; we still have not seen the edited proofs). In this paper (1), which I have co-authored with Anders Blomberg, Magnus Alm Rosenblad and Mikael Molin, we utilize metagenomic data from the GOS-expedition (2) together with fully sequenced bacterial genomes to show that:

1. Detoxification genes in general are underrepresented in marine planktonic bacteria
2. Surprisingly, the detoxification that show a differential distribution are more abundant in open ocean water than closer to the coast
3. Peroxidases and peroxiredoxins seem to be the main line of defense against oxidative stress for bacteria in the marine milieu, rather than e.g. catalases
4. The abundance of detoxification genes does not seem to increase with estimated pollution.

From this we conclude that other selective pressures than pollution likely play the largest role in shaping marine planktonic bacterial communities, such as for example nutrient limitations. This suggests substantial streamlining of gene copy number and genome sizes, in line with observations made in previous studies (3). Along the same lines, our findings indicate that the majority of marine bacteria would have a low capacity to adapt to increased pollution, which is relevant as large amounts of human pollutants and waste end up in the oceans every year. The study exemplifies the use of metagenomics data in ecotoxicology, and how we can examine anthropogenic consequences on life in the sea using approaches derived from genomics. You can read the paper in its entirety here.

References:

1. Bengtsson-Palme J, Alm Rosenblad M, Molin M, Blomberg A: Metagenomics reveals that detoxification systems are underrepresented in marine bacterial communities. BMC Genomics. Volume 15, Issue 749 (2014). doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-15-749 [Paper link]

2. Yooseph S, Sutton G, Rusch DB, Halpern AL, Williamson SJ, Remington K, Eisen JA, Heidelberg KB, Manning G, Li W, Jaroszewski L, Cieplak P, Miller CS, Li H, Mashiyama ST, Joachimiak MP, Van Belle C, Chandonia J-M, Soergel DA, Zhai Y, Natarajan K, Lee S, Raphael BJ, Bafna V, Friedman R, Brenner SE, Godzik A, Eisenberg D, Dixon JE, Taylor SS, et al: The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition: expanding the universe of protein families. PLoS Biology. 5:e16 (2007).
3. Yooseph S, Nealson KH, Rusch DB, McCrow JP, Dupont CL, Kim M, Johnson J, Montgomery R, Ferriera S, Beeson KY, Williamson SJ, Tovchigrechko A, Allen AE, Zeigler LA, Sutton G, Eisenstadt E, Rogers Y-H, Friedman R, Frazier M, Venter JC: Genomic and functional adaptation in surface ocean planktonic prokaryotes. Nature. 468:60–66 (2010).

In a recent Nature article (1), Craig Venter and his co-workers at JCVI has not only sequenced one marine bacterium, but 137 different isolates. Their main goal of this study was to better understand the ecology of marine picoplankton in the context of Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) data (2,3). As I see it, there are at least two really interesting things going on here:

First, this is a milestone in sequencing. Were not talking one genome – one article anymore. Were talking one article – 137 new genomes. This vastly raises the bar for any sequencing efforts in the future, but even more importantly, it shifts the focus even further from the actual sequencing to the purpose of the sequencing. One sequenced genome might be interesting enough if it fills a biological knowledge gap, but just sequencing a bacterial strain isn’t worth that much anymore. With the arrival of second- and third-generation sequencing techniques, this development was pretty obvious, but this article is (to my knowledge) the first real proof of that this has finally happened. I expect that five to ten years from now, not sequencing an organism of interest for your research will be viewed as very strange and backwards-looking. “Why didn’t you sequence this?” will be a highly relevant review question for many publications. But also the days when you could write “we here publish for the first time the complete genome sequence of <insert organism name here>” and have that as the central theme for an article will soon be over. Sequencing will simply be reduced to the (valuable) tool it actually is. Which is probably good, as it brings us back to biology again. Articles like this one, where you look at ~200 genomes to investigate ecological questions, are simply providing a more relevant biological perspective than staring at the sequence of one genome in a time when DNA-data is flooding over us.

Second, this is the first (again, to my knowledge) publication where questions arising from metagenomics (2,3,4) has initiated a huge sequencing effort to understand the ecology or the environment to which the metagenome is associated. This highlights a new use of metagenomics as a prospective technique, to mine various environments for interesting features, and then select a few of its inhabitants and look closer at who is responsible for what. With a number of emerging single cell sequencing and visualisation techniques (5,6,7,8) as well as the application of cell sorting approaches to environmental communities (5,9), we can expect metagenomics to play a huge role in organism, strain and protein discovery, but also in determining microbial ecosystem services. Though Venter’s latest article (1) is just a first step towards this new role for metagenomics, it’s a nice example of what (meta)genomics could look like towards the end of this decade, if even not sooner.

1. Yooseph et al. Genomic and functional adaptation in surface ocean planktonic prokaryotes. Nature (2010) vol. 468 (7320) pp. 60-6
2. Yooseph et al. The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition: expanding the universe of protein families. Plos Biol (2007) vol. 5 (3) pp. e16
3. Rusch et al. The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition: northwest Atlantic through eastern tropical Pacific. Plos Biol (2007) vol. 5 (3) pp. e77
4. Rusch et al. Characterization of Prochlorococcus clades from iron-depleted oceanic regions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2010) pp.
5. Woyke et al. Assembling the marine metagenome, one cell at a time. PLoS ONE (2009) vol. 4 (4) pp. e5299
6. Woyke et al. One bacterial cell, one complete genome. PLoS ONE (2010) vol. 5 (4) pp. e10314
7. Moraru et al. GeneFISH – an in situ technique for linking gene presence and cell identity in environmental microorganisms. Environ Microbiol (2010) pp.
8. Lasken. Genomic DNA amplification by the multiple displacement amplification (MDA) method. Biochem Soc Trans (2009) vol. 37 (Pt 2) pp. 450-3
9. Mary et al. Metaproteomic and metagenomic analyses of defined oceanic microbial populations using microwave cell fixation and flow cytometric sorting. FEMS microbiology ecology (2010) pp.