A strong link between marine microbial community composition and function challenges the idea of functional redundancy
A strong link between marine microbial community composition and function challenges the idea of functional redundancy
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DOI：
10.1038/s41396-018-0158-1
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发表时间：
2018-10-01
期刊：
影响因子：
11
通讯作者：
Debroas, Didier
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Galand, Pierre E.;Pereira, Olivier;Debroas, Didier
海洋微生物具有巨大的多样性，但一个根本的问题仍然没有答案：为什么海洋中有这么多微生物物种？长期以来，微生物群落的功能冗余的想法一直被认为，因此高水平的丰富度通常是由不同的分类群的存在来解释的，这些分类群能够进行完全相同的一套代谢过程，并且可以很容易地相互取代。在这里，我们驳斥了海洋微生物群落功能冗余的假说，表明群落组成的变化改变了群落在不同时间和空间尺度上的整体功能属性。我们对地中海西北部沿海地点的元基因组监测也显示，多样化的微生物群落蕴藏着高度多样化的潜在蛋白质。利用元基因组(所有阅读)提供的所有信息，而不是只依赖已知基因(注释的直系基因)，对于揭示分类和功能群落组成之间的相似性至关重要。我们的发现不排除部分冗余的可能性，即具有某些特定功能的生物体在其他生态需求不同的情况下可以共存。然而，它表明，海洋微生物多样性反映了微生物新陈代谢的巨大多样性，并突出了尚未在微生物海洋中发现的遗传潜力。
Marine microbes have tremendous diversity, but a fundamental question remains unanswered: why are there so many microbial species in the sea? The idea of functional redundancy for microbial communities has long been assumed, so that the high level of richness is often explained by the presence of different taxa that are able to conduct the exact same set of metabolic processes and that can readily replace each other. Here, we refute the hypothesis of functional redundancy for marine microbial communities by showing that a shift in the community composition altered the overall functional attributes of communities across different temporal and spatial scales. Our metagenomic monitoring of a coastal northwestern Mediterranean site also revealed that diverse microbial communities harbor a high diversity of potential proteins. Working with all information given by the metagenomes (all reads) rather than relying only on known genes (annotated orthologous genes) was essential for revealing the similarity between taxonomic and functional community compositions. Our finding does not exclude the possibility for a partial redundancy where organisms that share some specific function can coexist when they differ in other ecological requirements. It demonstrates, however, that marine microbial diversity reflects a tremendous diversity of microbial metabolism and highlights the genetic potential yet to be discovered in an ocean of microbes.