Great Barrier Reef microbiome mapped as researchers discover 500 bacterial species previously unknown to science

Scientists have identified the vast communities of microbes that make up the Great Barrier Reef. Photograph: Jürgen Freund/WWF/PA View image in fullscreen Scientists have identified the vast communities of microbes that make up the Great Barrier Reef. Photograph: Jürgen Freund/WWF/PA Great Barrier Reef microbiome mapped as researchers discover 500 bacterial species previously unknown to science Research identifies 808,585 viral genomes belonging to what scientists estimate to be 362,802 different viruses Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast More than a decade after the human microbiome was comprehensively mapped, scientists have now identified the vast communities of microbes that make up the Great Barrier Reef. Analysing DNA from seawater samples of 48 reefs, researchers have mapped the microbiome of the Great Barrier Reef , documenting more than 360,000 distinct viruses as well as more than 500 new bacterial species not previously known to science. The research, published in the journal Nature , was led by scientists at the University of Queensland and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). Dr Yun Kit Yeoh, a senior research scientist at AIMS and a senior author of the paper, described microorganisms as a “very important part of the reef ecosystem” that underpinned marine food chains. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email “Many of the microbes on the reef can photosynthesise … like plants, they can take light energy [and] can convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. “They are eaten by krill and other zooplankton which are then consumed by other animals. “We haven’t been able to really study a lot of them except for a select few that we can grow properly in the lab on petri dishes.” But recent technological advances have allowed scientists to sequence DNA taken from the environment, giving a fuller picture of these microscopic communities. The field – known as metagenomics – is akin to solving thousands of jigsaw puzzles simultaneously; a single drop of seawater can contain the DNA of thousands of different microbes. “We wouldn’t have been able to do this, say, 10 years ago, but fortunately computing power keeps increasing at an exponential rate,” said Prof Philip Hugenholtz, a microbiologist at the University of Queensland and a senior author on the paper. The research, which first began more than five years ago, identified 808,585 viral genomes belonging to what the researchers estimate to be 362,802 different viruses. The analysis also identified 5,283 bacterial and archaeal genomes representing 876 distinct species – 584 of which have never been documented before. Hugenholtz said those large figures were expected. “This is just how huge the microbial world is,” he said. “We know that everywhere we sequence … there’s always new viruses turning up. “I was a little bit surprised that we found over 500 new bacterial species. skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion “The human gut and the ma