Planktonic microbial communities from North Pacific Subtropical Gyre

This project consists of analyses of of planktonic microbial communities in a region of the North Pacific Ocean. The Subtropical Gyre consists of a clockwise swirling vortex of ocean currents that make up most of the northern Pacific Ocean. Samples were taken at different depths (10 m to 4000 m) at the Hawaii open-ocean time-series station ALOHA (22o45' N, 158oW) and large DNA fragments were cloned (36 kbp fosmids) from the samples and shotgun sequenced. A comparison of protein sequences encoded by samples at various depths and clustering of functional categories revealed definite gradients. For example, proteins involved in photosynthesis were found in the photic zone, as expected, while proteins involved in surface attachment were more prevalent in deep samples, suggesting a greater tendency for surface colonization at those ocean depths. There are a set of GenBank Accession Numbers associated with this study. DU731018-DU796676 and DU800850-DU800864 correspond to fosmid end sequences while DQ300508-DQ300926 are the small subunit ribosomal RNA sequences. In addition EF089401-EF089402 , EF100190-EF100191 , EF107101-EF107103 , EF107106 , EU016559-EU016674 and GQ412706-GQ412710 are genomic sequences derived from this study. 454 sequence data is available from the Short Read Archive (SRA): SRA000262 and SRA000263.