M.L. Sogin et al., "Microbial diversity in the deep sea and the underexplored 'rare biosphere,'" Proc Nat Acad Sci, 103:12115-20, 2006. (Cited in 81 papers)
In 2006, Mitchell Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., and colleagues examined 344 water samples from the North Atlantic Deep Water. They amplified genes encoding ribosomal RNA (used to map microbial taxonomy), which they then sequenced using a new technique called "massively parallel" sequencing. They found a level of microbial diversity two orders of magnitude higher than results of earlier full-genome sequencing studies. Many of the sequences found had never before been identified, and most were very rare.
The method used in this paper is a new way to identify rarer sequences that previous sequencing studies overlooked, says Josh Neufeld, a microbial ecologist at the University of Waterloo.
Identifying rare gene elements of the microbial biosphere can shed light on the ...