The Global Ocean Genome: A “Catalog” of Ocean Life

Life has been evolving in the oceans much longer than it has on land, resulting in highly diverse ocean organisms—particularly microbes like bacteria and archaea. Ocean microbes perform crucial functions that influence the health of the ocean and ultimately impact Earth’s climate. To understand the diversity and functions of marine organisms, scientists have used a powerful technique called metagenomics to study the DNA of all the organisms present in an ocean-water sample at once. In our research, we combined results from multiple ocean metagenomic studies, taken from various locations and depth zones across the world’s oceans, to produce a global ocean genome composed of 317.5 million groups of similar genes—approximately half of which could be categorized by type of organism and function. This unprecedented amount of data has much to teach us about varied ocean habitats and can help scientists answer many questions about ocean organisms and their functions.