Sequencing effort dictates gene discovery in marine microbial metagenomes.

ABSTRACT: Massive metagenomic sequencing combined with gene prediction methods were previously used to compile the gene catalogue of the ocean and host-associated microbes. Global expeditions conducted over the past 15 years have sampled the ocean to build a catalogue of genes from pelagic microbes. Here we undertook a large sequencing effort of a perturbed Red Sea plankton community to uncover that the rate of gene discovery increases continuously with sequencing effort, with no indication that the retrieved 2.83 million non-redundant (complete) genes predicted from the experiment represented a nearly complete inventory of the genes present in the sampled community (i.e., no evidence of saturation). The underlying reason is the Pareto-like distribution of the abundance of genes in the plankton comm

SUBMITTER: Duarte CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7756799 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature