Marine Environments
Alexander H. Treusch, Ulrich Stingl and Stephen J. Giovannoni
from: Environmental Molecular Microbiology (Edited by: Wen-Tso Liu and Janet K. Jansson). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2010)
Abstract
Ocean microbial communities play important roles in global geochemical cycles. From the earliest cultivation experiments to today's metagenomic analyses, most of the major discoveries in this field were driven by applications of novel methods. Molecular ecology had a major impact by revealing the true scope of microbial diversity and providing genetic markers that could be used to track important species, even in cases where cultures were unavailable. In some cases, metagenomics provided insight into the biochemical adaptations of these organisms. A renaissance in culturing technique led to isolates of many abundant ocean microbes that could then be studied in a laboratory setting. Today a consortium of approaches that span scales from molecules to ocean basins are being applied to ocean micobial ecosystems, with the result that marine microbiology is becoming a highly integrated science read more ...
