Global patterns in bacterial diversity

Microbes are difficult to culture. Consequently, the primary source of information about a fundamental evolutionary topic, life's diversity, is the environmental distribution of gene sequences. We report the most comprehensive analysis of the environmental distribution of bacteria to date, based on 21,752 16S rRNA sequences compiled from 111 studies of diverse physical environments. We clustered the samples based on similarities in the phylogenetic lineages that they contain and found that, surprisingly, the major environmental determinant of microbial community composition is salinity rather than extremes of temperature, pH, or other physical and chemical factors represented in our samples. We find that…

• YU
  Yale University
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: GM08759, T32 GM08759