ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Prevalent genome streamlining and latitudinal divergence of planktonic bacteria in the surface ocean.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 202 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
202 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 394 citations in OpenAlex.
- Advances in phage-host interaction prediction: in silico method enhances the development of phage therapies.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2024Pooled it
- Effect of cellular nutrient economy on the evolution of genome size in phytoplankton.Science advances · 2026Article
- Defining metabolic niches for marine microbial heterotrophs.Science advances · 2026Article
- Complex temporal dynamics of phage-bacteria populations in an animal-associated marine system.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Single-cell assembled genomes predict enhanced bacterial metabolic cross-feeding potential in carbon-enriched soils.The ISME journal · 2026Article
- Ecology of prokaryotic DNA viruses in a highly impacted coastal lagoon revealed through comparative and temporal metagenomics.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Seasonal enhancement of the viral shunt catalyzes a subsurface oxygen maximum in the Sargasso Sea.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ecogenomics and functional biogeography of the Roseobacter group in the global oceans based on 653 MAGs and SAGs.Microbiome · 2025Article
- Widely-distributed freshwater microorganisms with streamlined genomes co-occur in cohorts with high abundance.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Genetic exchange shapes ultra-small Patescibacteria metabolic capacities in the terrestrial subsurface.mSystems · 2025Article
- Ecophysiology and global dispersal of the freshwater SAR11-IIIb genus Fontibacterium.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Bringing the uncultivated microbial majority of freshwater ecosystems into culture.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Rival phytoplankton contribute to the cross protection ofApplied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Functions and mechanisms of eukaryotic RNA-guided programmed DNA elimination.Biochemical Society transactions · 2025Review
- Microbial functional diversity and redundancy: moving forward.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- Global niche partitioning of purine and pyrimidine cross-feeding among ocean microbes.Science advances · 2025Article
- Genome-streamlined SAR202 bacteria are widely present and active in the euphotic ocean.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Net rate of lateral gene transfer in marine prokaryoplankton.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Culture-supported ecophysiology of the SAR116 clade demonstrates metabolic and spatial niche partitioning.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Integrating genomic evidence for an updated taxonomy of the bacterial genus Spiribacter.Scientific reports · 2024Article
142 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
20 authors at 10 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Planktonic bacteria dominate surface ocean biomass and influence global biogeochemical processes, but remain poorly characterized owing to difficulties in cultivation. Using large-scale single cell genomics, we obtained insight into the genome content and biogeography of many bacterial lineages inhabiting the surface ocean. We found that, compared with existing cultures, natural bacterioplankton have smaller genomes, fewer gene duplications, and are depleted in guanine and cytosine, noncoding nucleotides, and genes encoding transcription, signal transduction, and noncytoplasmic proteins. These findings provide strong evidence that genome streamlining and oligotrophy are prevalent features among diverse, free-living bacterioplankton, whereas existing laboratory cultures consist primarily of copiotrophs. The apparent ubiquity of metabolic specialization and mixotrophy, as predicted from single cell genomes, also may contribute to the difficulty in bacterioplankton cultivation. Using metagenome fragment recruitment against single cell genomes, we show that the global distribution of surface ocean bacterioplankton correlates with temperature and latitude and is not limited by dispersal at the time scales required for nucleotide substitution to exceed the current operational definition of bacterial species. Single cell genomes with highly similar small subunit rRNA gene sequences exhibited significant genomic and biogeographic variability, highlighting challenges in the interpretation of individual gene surveys and metagenome assemblies in environmental microbiology. Our study demonstrates the utility of single cell genomics for gaining an improved understanding of the composition and dynamics of natural microbial assemblages.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.