Moore Marine Microbial Sequencing

The overarching goal of the marine microbial sequencing project is to explore the distribution, function and ecological role of marine microbes, and their role in the overall health of oceans and climates. The field of marine microbiology has made amazing progress in recent years through advances in genomic and metagenomic technologies, and is causing us to reevaluate many of the basic precepts of microbial ecology and evolution. Nonetheless, out of the 300+ prokaryotic genomes that have been completely sequenced to date, only about 18 are from the marine environment. In an attempt to bridge this gap, we are sequencing the draft genomes of over 155 diverse, ecologically relevant marine microorganisms that were selected for sequencing based on the following criteria:

Phylogenetic tree of Moore Microbial Genome Sequencing Program
(courtesy of Uli Stingl, stinglu@science.oregonstate.edu)
Click on the image AND DRILL DOWN for more information.

1.Open ocean and coastal bacterioplankton isolates most closely related to uncultured marine clades abundant in ribosomal RNA surveys.

2.Open ocean and coastal bacterioplankton isolates for .cluster sequencing. from ecologically relevant marine clades.

3.Bacterioplankton isolates representing broad physiological diversity (photoautotrophs, photoheterotrophs, nitrifiers, methanotrophs, etc.).

4.Isolates from diverse environments/habitats (greater depths, more extreme temperatures, specialized habitats).

These genome data not only hold the promise of delivering tremendous biological insight through individual and broad comparative genome analyses, but also provide a key reference collection for culture-independent metagenomic surveys like the global ocean sampling expedition and many others.

The project was initiated in Fall 2004 with a grant to the J. Craig Venter Institute. Auto-annotated genome sequences have been deposited in GenBank. For further information, see the J.Craig Venter Institute's Marine Microbial Genome Sequencing Project. The sequenced genomes from this project are included in CAMERA.s collection of unfinished microbial genomes.

Map showing the site of origin of sequenced genomes