Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of the Sargasso Sea

• DOI: 10.1126/science.1093857
• Publication Date: 2004-03-09T01:34:33Z
• Authors: J. Craig Venter; Karin Remington; John F. Heidelberg; Aaron L. Halpern; Doug Rusch; Jonathan A. Eisen; Dongying Wu; Ian Paulsen; Karen E. Nelson; William Nelson; Derrick E. Fouts; Samuel Levy; Anthony H. Knap; Michael W. Lomas; Ken Nealson; Owen White; Jeremy Peterson; Jeff Hoffman; Rachel Parsons; Holly Baden-Tillson; Cynthia Pfannkoch; Yu-Hui Rogers; Hamilton O. Smith
• Keywords: Sargasso sea; Shotgun

We have applied "whole-genome shotgun sequencing" to microbial populations collected en masse on tangential flow and impact filters from seawater samples the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda. A total of 1.045 billion base pairs nonredundant sequence was generated, annotated, analyzed elucidate gene content, diversity, relative abundance organisms within these environmental samples. These data are estimated derive at least 1800 genomic species based relatedness, including 148 previously unknown bacterial phylotypes. identified over 1.2 million genes represented in samples, more than 782 new rhodopsin-like photoreceptors. Variation present stoichiometry suggests substantial oceanic diversity.