Secrets from the deep
Wednesday, 14 Mar 2007 14:45
Secrets from the oceans could help scientists better understand biology
Millions of new genes discovered in the ocean could help scientists to understand more about the natural world, research claims today.
The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition led to more than six million new proteins being identified. Tiny microbes were collected from waters close to Newfoundland, the Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia and in the Panama Canal.
This figure is nearly twice the number of proteins ever described before, scientists behind the find argue in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology.
Led by Dr Gerard Manning, director of the Razavi Newman Center for Bioinformatics at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the researchers spent months analysing 7.7 million parts of seaborne DNA to classify the new proteins.
It is hoped that the discovery will help scientists to the basic rules of biology.
"We go out into the ocean, we find all this diversity and analysing what's new and what's not new reflects back on the things we thought we knew well," said Dr Manning.
But he added that "it may be decades" before the "trove of sequences" is fully understood.
"If anything, this is just the beginning," he said.
A series of papers relating to the Sorcerer expedition are published today in PLoS Biology.
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