The planet is home to a vast number of microscopic living organisms - plants, animals, and bacteria- found from deep sea volcanoes to the highest mountain peaks. These organisms too small to be seen by the naked eye affect both human health and the health of the world’s ecosystems. Despite their centrality to life on Earth, scientists have a limited understanding of their fundamental structure.
The planet is home to a vast number of microscopic living organisms - plants, animals, and bacteria- found from deep sea volcanoes to the highest mountain peaks. These organisms too small to be seen by the naked eye affect both human health and the health of the world’s ecosystems. Despite their centrality to life on Earth, scientists have a limited understanding of their fundamental structure.
In an effort to better understand these communities or ‘microbiomes’ NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological scientists took part in a massive global research collaboration known as the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP), which recently released the first reference database, or atlas, of microbes covering the planet. This guide, released online in Nature today, will allow scientists to collaborate on studies and catalogue microbial diversity at an unprecedented scale.
“Microbes are everywhere,” said first author Luke Thompson, Ph.D., project manager and current research associate at NOAA. “Yet prior to this massive undertaking, changes in microbial community composition were identified mainly by focusing on one sample type, one region at a time. This made it difficult to identify patterns across environments and geography to infer generalized principles.”
Continue reading at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Photo via NOAA.
