microbial diversity

The MIRADA LTERs project (see working group materials) is an NSF-funded Microbial Biodiversity Survey and Inventory across all 13 of the major aquatic (marine and freshwater) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites. The long-term objective of our study is to document and describe baseline diversity and relative abundance data for both common and rare members of microbial communities located in aquatic LTER sites and to relate this diversity to the underlying physical and chemical...

The MIRADA LTERs project (see working group materials) is an NSF-funded Microbial Biodiversity Survey and Inventory across all 13 of the major aquatic (marine and freshwater) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites. The long-term objective of our study is to document and describe baseline diversity and relative abundance data for both common and rare members of microbial communities located in aquatic LTER sites and to relate this diversity to the underlying physical and chemical...

Soil is often considered to be one of the main reservoirs of microbial diversity on the planet. This diversity could provide a range of information about the origins of microbial functional diversity as well as novel genetic resources. However, our historical inability to cultivate the majority of soil bacteria has hampered our understanding and exploitation of this large diverse community (more than 95% are often considered inaccessible through traditional culture techniques). Over the last...

There is a glaring gap in microbial genome sequence availability – the currently available genome sequences show a highly biased phylogenetic distribution compared to the extent of microbial diversity known today. This bias has resulted in major limitations in our knowledge of microbial genome complexity and our understanding of the evolution, physiology and metabolic capacity of microbes. Although there have been small efforts in sequencing genomes from across the tree of life for...