A communal catalogue reveals Earth's multiscale microbial diversity. Other Scholarly Work

Thompson, Luke R, Sanders, Jon G, McDonald, Daniel et al. (2017). A communal catalogue reveals Earth's multiscale microbial diversity. . NATURE, 551(7681), 457-463. 10.1038/nature24621

cited authors

  • Thompson, Luke R; Sanders, Jon G; McDonald, Daniel; Amir, Amnon; Ladau, Joshua; Locey, Kenneth J; Prill, Robert J; Tripathi, Anupriya; Gibbons, Sean M; Ackermann, Gail; Navas-Molina, Jose A; Janssen, Stefan; Kopylova, Evguenia; Vázquez-Baeza, Yoshiki; González, Antonio; Morton, James T; Mirarab, Siavash; Zech Xu, Zhenjiang; Jiang, Lingjing; Haroon, Mohamed F; Kanbar, Jad; Zhu, Qiyun; Jin Song, Se; Kosciolek, Tomasz; Bokulich, Nicholas A; Lefler, Joshua; Brislawn, Colin J; Humphrey, Gregory; Owens, Sarah M; Hampton-Marcell, Jarrad; Berg-Lyons, Donna; McKenzie, Valerie; Fierer, Noah; Fuhrman, Jed A; Clauset, Aaron; Stevens, Rick L; Shade, Ashley; Pollard, Katherine S; Goodwin, Kelly D; Jansson, Janet K; Gilbert, Jack A; Knight, Rob; Earth Microbiome Project Consortium

authors

abstract

  • Our growing awareness of the microbial world's importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth's microbial diversity.

publication date

  • November 1, 2017

published in

keywords

  • Animals
  • Archaea
  • Bacteria
  • Biodiversity
  • Earth Microbiome Project Consortium
  • Earth, Planet
  • Ecology
  • Gene Dosage
  • Geographic Mapping
  • Humans
  • Microbiota
  • Plants
  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Medium

  • Print-Electronic

start page

  • 457

end page

  • 463

volume

  • 551

issue

  • 7681