Microbial life in the oceans of the past more diverse belief

Microbial life in the oceans is far more diverse than ever with upwards of 20,000 different kinds of bacteria live in one liter of sea water only imaging. Study of samples taken from various sites in the North Atlantic show that the larger number of types of bacteria, with orders of magnitude, from what existed in the past estimates.

searchers Visit their types of microbes using improved version of the DNA sequencing machines. : Results were published in the August 8, 2006 edition of the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and part of an international census of marine microbes were.

 Microbial life in the oceans video

 

"What we do in the PNAS paper is to try to speed up the process, it is more efficient, to get evidence of microbial molecular diversity, said:" This study author Mitchell Sogin, Ph.D., director Josephine Bay Paul Center, Marine Laboratory Woods Hole on Earth. Only short fragments of sequence tags called ribosomal RNAs rather than full genome sequencing of ribosomal RNA, he said.

Samples from three different locations in the North Atlantic that were several hundred miles apart and in different climatic regions, respectively. Samples taken at different depths of some 500-600 m deep, and others between 1700 to 4000 meters deep. Additional samples were taken at the fourth site, the central mountains not far from the sea of Juan de Fuca Ridge where there are volcanoes under the sea.


When the results came in, finding a number of researchers were surprised. Net of a number of bacterial types was seen. "We think diversity may be 20% to 50% more to see," Sogin said the doctor. Some types of bacteria at least 100 times higher than previous estimates, the number to about 25,000 kinds of microbes per liter of seawater. Researchers predict that the total biodiversity of bacteria in the oceans is probably more than five million different types of microorganisms.

In this article, PNAS, author explains why the variation exists, such as: "a large number and wide variety of microbes, their metabolism, the accumulation of mutations in 3500000000 years should be given very high levels of genetic Leadership and phenotypic diversity. "
Another surprise was that a lot of variation in species not previously known to very low doses appearance was seen, what Dub biologists' organisms low frequency. It's hard to say what the meaning of low abundance organisms present - whether this is simply the type of bacteria is rare, or perhaps occur at higher rates in other parts of the ocean, doctor Sogin said.
The researchers also noted that only samples from each region showed different bacteria that were strongly against each other. For example, in samples from Axial Sea Mountain "We expected them to be different from each other, but not wildly," he said.

Forming microbes from 50% to 95% of the total biomass, ocean, land, and now is known as a critical role in ocean health, and preservation and development of life on the planet.
Microbial life first appeared somewhere between 3.5 to 3,900,000 years ago. "His life was microbial exclusively to 560 million years or more, before at least 80% of our history was exclusively microbial," Sogin said the doctor. During those millions of years, microbes slowly changing atmospheric composition and composition of chemicals in the ocean. They often lived as a planet engine is described.
"They are responsible for all major carbon transformations that occur on Earth. ... They harvest energy from the sun, they catalyze all the major biogeochemical transformations them fully responsible for all nitrogen cycling. No other organisms except bacteria do cycling nitrogen, "he said. In fact, the microbes necessary to preserve life on Earth.
"Our existence is totally dependent on proper functioning of the microbial world to maintain habitability. They can live without us but we probably no germs can not survive," Sogin said the doctor. Many bacteria live in the oceans are not dangerous to humans, some of them symbiots other life forms living in the ocean, plus some of the sulfur metabolism participating in another part of the chemical processes on the planet.
Bacteria, microbial life is not only in the ocean, but supposed make up nearly two-thirds of the ocean biomass. Other microbes are Archaea (Make the most of the rest from biomass), protists protozoa and fungi, but due to technical limitations it was not for testing.

 Microbial life in the oceans video-2

Researchers at several stages in the future want to research there. One is to take samples from many more sites (preferably thousands) is the world's oceans. Another is how some of the microbes in laboratory cultures of many kinds of microbes to survive not out of their natural environment. After planting, they can be studied and researchers can start to understand how microbes function in a particular game environment.