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Updated: Mar 27, 2026

Analyzing Gene Expression from Marine Microbial Communities using Environmental Transcriptomics
Published on: February 18, 2009
Genetic Diversity Affects the Daily Transcriptional Oscillations of Marine Microbial Populations
Irina N Shilova1, Julie C Robidart1, Edward F DeLong2
1Department of Ocean Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, United States of America.
Abstract:
Marine microbial communities are genetically diverse but have robust synchronized daily transcriptional patterns at the genus level that are similar across a wide variety of oceanic regions. We developed a microarray-inspired gene-centric approach to resolve transcription of closely-related but distinct strains/ecotypes in high-throughput sequence data. Applying this approach to the existing metatranscriptomics datasets collected from two different oceanic regions, we found unique and variable patterns of transcription by individual taxa within the abundant picocyanobacteria Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, the alpha Proteobacterium Pelagibacter and the eukaryotic picophytoplankton Ostreococcus. The results demonstrate that marine microbial taxa respond differentially to variability in space and time in the ocean. These intra-genus individual transcriptional patterns underlie whole microbial community responses, and the approach developed here facilitates deeper insights into microbial population dynamics.
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