Technology development to understand microbial diversity and function in the oceans and other ecosystems.

Royal Society

Microbial diversity in the oceans and other aquatic ecosystems is vast and drives numerous important ecosystem functions and biogeochemical cycles. We hold a long-term interest in understanding the diversity of eukaryotic microbes in aquatic ecosystems and how that diversity fits onto the tree of life. Our work in this area involves developing single cell sampling technologies and new methods to understand microbial diversity and function such as methods to recover deep-sea RNA profiles.

Examples of our work in this area:

  • Rodríguez-Martínez R, Leonard G, Milner DS, Sudek S, Conway M, Moore K, Hudson T, Mahé F, Keeling PJ, Santoro AE. 2020. Controlled sampling of ribosomally active protistan diversity in sediment-surface layers identifies putative players in the marine carbon sink. The ISME journal 14:984-998.
  • Stoeck T, Bass D, Nebel M, Christen R, Jones MD, BREINER HW, Richards TA. 2010. Multiple marker parallel tag environmental DNA sequencing reveals a highly complex eukaryotic community in marine anoxic water. Molecular Ecology 19:21-31.
  • Wideman JG, Monier A, Rodríguez-Martínez R, Leonard G, Cook E, Poirier C, Maguire F, Milner DS, Irwin NA, Moore K. 2020. Unexpected mitochondrial genome diversity revealed by targeted single-cell genomics of heterotrophic flagellated protists. Nature Microbiology 5:154-165.

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