Environmental Genome Shotgun Sequencing of Marine Viroplankton

海洋病毒是地球上数量最多、种类最多、遗传特征最少的生物实体。 通过感染、复制和宿主细胞裂解的循环，病毒影响到宿主生物（主要是细菌）的生物多样性和进化以及整个海洋环境的运作所涉及的多种途径和过程。 宏基因组学方法，或那些有利于从整个环境群落的基因组材料的分析，将被用来调查的病毒和细菌宿主种群的多样性，从两个表面的海洋水样本（收集自干龟，佛罗里达和缅因州湾）和一个缺氧的河口样本从切萨皮克湾。 此外，将使用病毒和细菌群落DNA的测序来确定病毒是否是导致原绿球藻和SAR 11的完全测序培养菌株与其各自的环境亲属之间观察到的明显基因组差异的原因。 海洋表层沃茨中存在大量的光合细菌原绿球藻和具有捕光功能的溶解有机碳利用微生物SAR 11，它们在海洋营养物质的循环中发挥着重要作用。 对这些生物体和感染它们的病毒进行高通量测序，将揭示自然存在的海洋微生物遗传变异的起源，这一项目产生的序列数据将存入公共数据库，供科学界使用，并将使目前病毒宏基因组数据的规模扩大100倍。 来自华盛顿公立学校的中学生和教师将直接参与该项目，并通过DISCOVER GENOMICS了解基因组学方法！克雷格文特尔研究所的外展项目。 此外，教师研究员将在资助的暑期实习期间延长他们的培训，旨在将海洋微生物生态学的世界带到课堂上。

Marine viruses are the most numerous, most diverse and the least genetically characterized biological entities on Earth. Through cycles of infection, replication and host cell lysis, viruses impact multiple pathways and processes involved in the biodiversity and evolution of host organisms, primarily bacteria, and the functioning of marine environments as a whole. Metagenomic approaches, or those that facilitate the analysis of genomic material from whole environmental communities, will be used to investigate the diversity of viral and bacterial host populations from two surface marine water samples (collected from the Dry Tortugas, Florida and the Gulf of Maine) and one poorly oxygenated estuarine sample from the Chesapeake Bay. Additionally, sequencing of viral and bacterial community DNA will be used to determine if viruses are responsible for the apparent genomic differences observed between the fully sequenced cultured strains of Prochlorococcus and SAR11 and their respective environmental relatives. Prochlorococcus, a photosynthetic microbe, and SAR11, a group of dissolved organic carbon-utilizing microbes with light-harvesting capabilities, are incredibly abundant in marine surface waters and play important roles in the cycling of essential nutrients. High-throughput sequencing of these organisms and the viruses that infect them will shed light on the origins of genetic variation in naturally occurring marine microorganisms.The sequence data resulting from this project will be made available to the scientific community through deposition into public databases and will expand the current size of viral metagenomic data 100-fold. Middle-school students and teachers from Washington D.C. public schools will participate directly in the project and be introduced to genomic approaches through the DISCOVER GENOMICS! outreach program at the J. Craig Venter Institute. Futhermore, teacher fellows will extend their training during a funded summer internship designed to bring the world of marine microbial ecology to the classroom.