Original title: A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity
Microbes are tiny living things, and researchers have sampled them in many places. But different study methods make it hard to compare what each team finds. This project brings together samples collected by hundreds of researchers using coordinated methods. It tracks exact DNA sequences rather than grouping similar ones together, creating a reference that helps place new results in a global picture.
Imagine a neighborhood where everyone records the birds they see, but each person uses a different list and different names. It becomes hard to tell whether two people saw the same kind of bird or different ones. In this paper, coordinated ways of recording and comparing samples help researchers match exact DNA sequences across studies and build a shared catalogue.
Microbes live in many environments, but differences in how researchers collect and analyze samples can make studies hard to compare. A shared reference gives researchers global context for new DNA results and a way to add future studies.
The abstract describes a reference database and a framework for comparing and adding studies. It does not give specific findings about microbial diversity, describe the database's coverage or accuracy, or establish that it captures all microbial life on Earth.
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A communal catalogue reveals Earth’s multiscale microbial diversity — Luke Thompson, Jon G. Sanders, Daniel T. McDonald et al. — Nature — doi:10.1038/nature24621
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.