Snooping on the Earth's Microbiology Program

The goal of the Earth Microbiome Project is to sample as many of the Earth's microbiomeas as possible to promote understanding of microbes and their relationship sons and relationships with the environment, including plants, animals and humansThe mission needs the help of scientists from all over the worldTo date, the program has covered seven continents and 43 countries, from the Arctic to the South Pole, and more than 500 researchers have contributed to sample and data collectionMembers of the program are using this information as part of about 100 studies, half of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals"Microbes are everywhere," said DrLuke Thompson, a former postdoctoral researcher at Knight Labs and now a research assistant at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whopaperHowever, prior to this large-scale work, changes in the composition of the microbiome were identified primarily by focusing on a sample type in one place at a given pointThis makes it difficult to find universal principles in different environmental and geographical environments"members of the Earth Microbiome Program analyzed bacterial diversity in different environments, geographic locations, and chemical reactions by sequencing the 16S rRNA geneThe 16S rRNA gene is a specific genetic marker for bacteria and paleobacteria and can be used as a "bar code" to identify different types of bacteria, allowing researchers to track them in samples from around the worldResearchers of the program have also used a new method to eliminate sequencing errors in these data, allowing them to better understand the number of unique sequences in these microbiomesin the first data published, researchers from the Earth Microbiome Program identified about 300,000 unique microbial 16S rRNA sequences, of which nearly 90 percent could not find an exact matching sequence in the existing databasein existing databases, the number of 16S rRNA sequences is limited because they are not designed to allow people to add data in a useful way in the futureThe paper's co-author, DrJon Sanders, a postdoctoral researcher at Knight Labs, compared the differences between other databases and the Earth's microbiome program as a difference between phone book and Facebook "Previously, you had to list your sequences, which contained very little information about where the sequence came from or which ones it was found with," he said Today, we have designed a framework that supports all additional content, and it can be added organically to support new issues and insights "There is a large amount of microbiodiversity that is still not cataloged, " said Gilbert, To date, we have 'recaptured' about half of all known bacterial sequences Using this information, patterns of the distribution of the Earth's microbes are emerging " one of the most surprising findings, according to Gilbert, is that the unique 16S rRNA sequence reflects a particular environment better than the species units typically used by scientists The environmental diversification of planned sampling by the Earth Microbiome helps to demonstrate how much local environment affects the microbiome For example, the skin microbiomes of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and fish are more similar to each other than their microbiomes in the waters in which they swim; In general, there are considerable differences between the microbiomes of hosts such as humans or animals and those found in free-living microbiomes, such as those found in water and soil In general, for example, these free-living microbiomes are more diverse than host-related microbiomes "These global ecological models suggest that coordinated sampling and cumulative sampling are possible," said Jansson More sampling is needed, taking into account factors such as dimensions and altitude, as well as tracking changes in the environment over time The Earth Microbiome program provides a resource for exploring a large number of questions and is a starting point for leading new data to answer them "