Worldwide occurrence and activity of Symbiodinium in the open ocean. Symbiodinium in TARA OCEANS samples

Here we unveil the existence of Symbiodinium in global tropical and temperate surface oceans using DNA and RNA metabarcoding of size-fractionated plankton samples collected at 109 sites during the TARA Oceans 2009-2013 cruise. In order to further investigate the presence of live Symbiodinium cells in the ocean, the hypervariable region of the chloroplast 23S domain V (cp23S-HVR, appr. 180 bp) was amplified and sequenced from RNA-derived template, using Symbiodinium-specific primers forward 23SHYPERUP 5’-TCAGTACAAATAATATGCTG-3’ and reverse 23SHYPERDN 5’-TTATCGCCCCAATTAAACAGT-3’.