The catalog of microorganisms that populate the largest habitat on the planet, the oceans, has been completed: it is called Kmap and the leader of the work published in the journal Frontiers in Science was the Italian Elisa Laiolo, from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
The catalog is the result of systematic research which led to the collection of 317 million different groups of genes useful for understanding the biodiversity of the oceans, but also for identifying substances useful for developing new drugs.
“Kmap Global Ocean Gene Catalog 1.0 represents a step forward towards understanding the full diversity of the ocean, which contains more than 317 million gene sets from marine organisms around the world,” Laiolo said.
This is the largest catalog of its kind, available for free, and will be a fundamental tool for studying how different ocean ecosystems work, monitoring the impact of pollution and global warming and searching for biotechnological applications, such as new antibiotics or ways to break down plastic.
The feat was possible both thanks to new techniques that have made it possible to sample the DNA found in the marine environment in an increasingly simple and economical way, and thanks to the development of increasingly powerful supercomputers.
It was possible to analyze the DNA of over 2,000 oceanic sites, taking samples at various depths, and classifying millions of species of microorganisms based on their genetic characteristics.
The Kmap Ocean Gene Catalog 1.0 is just the first step toward developing a global ocean genome atlas that aims to identify every gene in every marine species around the world, from bacteria and fungi to plants and animals.
"Our analysis - added Laiolo - highlights the need to continue sampling the oceans, focusing on little-studied areas, such as the sea depths and the ocean floor. Furthermore, since the ocean is constantly evolving, both Due to both human activity and natural processes, the catalog will need to be continuously updated."
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