アブストラクト
| Date | 14:00-15:00 Jul 25, 2023 |
| Speaker | Shinichi Sunagawa Associate Professor, Microbiome Research, Department of Biology (D-BIOL), ETH Zürich |
| Title | The ocean microbiome as a treasure trove for novel taxa, enzymes and bioactive compounds |
| Abstract |
Ocean microbes are phylogenetically and metabolically diverse. Exploring
this diversity for yet unknown taxa and biochemistry has been greatly
accelerated by cultivation-independent DNA sequencing of microbial
communities in bulk (metagenomics) or as single cells. However, the
requirement for genome-resolved information has limited (i) the
identification and host assignment of biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs)
that encode enzymes and the synthesis of chemical compounds, including
biotechnological and therapeutic leads. Here, we analyzed metagenomic
data from decades of ocean sampling efforts to reconstruct 26,293
genomes that uncovered 2,700 previously unknown species and integrated
these data with publicly available reference and single-cell genomes to
compile the Ocean Microbiomics Database. Mining this database for BGCs
revealed Ca. Eudoremicrobiaceae, a new family of bacteria with an
unparalleled biosynthetic diversity in the open ocean. By biochemically
characterizing two BGCs, we found an unusual bioactive chemical
structure and an unexpected enzymatic reaction. These examples
demonstrate the current limitations of computational predictions by
sequence homology alone. This work highlights the promise of
environmental genomics for discovering new microbial products and
advancing current models of planetary-scale microbial distributions.
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