Natural variation in SAR11 marine bacterioplankton genomes inferred from metagenomic data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

One objective of metagenomics is to reconstruct information about specific uncultured organisms from fragmentary environmental DNA sequences. We used the genome of an isolate of the marine alphaproteobacterium SAR11 ('Candidatus Pelagibacter ubique'; strain HTCC1062), obtained from the cold, productive Oregon coast, as a query sequence to study variation in SAR11 metagenome sequence data from the Sargasso Sea, a warm, oligotrophic ocean gyre.

Results

The average amino acid identity of SAR11 genes encoded by the metagenomic data to the query genome was only 71%, indicating significant evolutionary divergence between the coastal isolates and Sargasso Sea populations. However, an analysis of gene neighbors indicated that SAR11 genes in the Sargasso Sea metagenomic da

SUBMITTER: Wilhelm LJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2217521 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature