Planktonic microbial eukaryotes in polar surface waters: recent advances in high-throughput sequencing

Qian Liu; Qiannan Zhao; Andrew McMinn; Eun Jin Yang; Yong Jiang

doi:10.1007/s42995-020-00062-y

Planktonic microbial eukaryotes in polar surface waters: recent advances in high-throughput sequencing

Mar Life Sci Technol. 2020 Sep 8;3(1):94-102. doi: 10.1007/s42995-020-00062-y. eCollection 2021 Feb.

Authors

Qian Liu^{1

2

3}, Qiannan Zhao^{1

2

3}, Andrew McMinn^{1

2

4}, Eun Jin Yang⁵, Yong Jiang^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Evolution and Marine Biodiversity, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003 China.
² College of Marine Life Sciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003 China.
³ Key Lab of Polar Oceanography and Global Ocean Change, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003 China.
⁴ Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia.
⁵ Division of Polar Ocean Environment, Korea Polar Research Institute, 213-3 Songdo-dong, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, 406-840 Korea.

Abstract

Marine microbial eukaryotes are important primary producers and play critical roles in key biogeochemical cycles. Recent advances in sequencing technology have focused attention on the extent of microbial biodiversity, revealing a huge, previously underestimated phylogenetic diversity with many new lineages. This technology has now become the most important tool to understand the ecological significance of this huge and novel diversity in polar oceans. In particular, high-throughput sequencing technologies have been successfully applied to enumerate and compare marine microbial diversity in polar environments. Here, a brief overview of polar microbial eukaryote diversity, as revealed by in-situ surveys of the high-throughput sequencing on 18S rRNA gene, is presented. Using these 'omic' approaches, further attention still needs to be focused on differences between specific locations and/or entire polar oceans and on bipolar comparisons of diversity and distribution.

Keywords: Bipolar; High-throughput sequencing; Marine microbial eukaryotes; Molecular surveys.

Publication types

Review