Insights into the phylogeny and coding potential of microbial dark matter by Christian Rinke et al.

These 201 genomes aren’t only the tip of the iceberg, they are the snowflake that just landed on the tip of the iceberg.

Microbial diversity is so immense, “a sequencing effort of at least 16,000 additional genomes from diverse environments is needed to cover 50% of the known phylogenetic diversity based on SSU rRNA profiling”.

And what will it take to cover the other 50%?? A lot more genomes. Next year JGI is targeting 2,000 single cell genomes, so we’ll see where we are in a decade!

Tags:   bacteria · genomics · nature · science · single cellNo Comments