Metagenomics reveals our incomplete knowledge of global diversity

Abstract

Contact: Javier.tamames@uv.es

Fig. 1.

(A) Assignment of a set of ORFs from the farm soil metagenome. We analyzed 60 000 randomly selected sequences from the full metagenome, using blastx searches and a threshold of 60% minimum identity between query and hit proteins. Each row in the plot corresponds to a single ORF, showing with colours how the assignment has varied in time (colours indicate different taxonomic classes). (B) This plot shows the accumulated number of ORFs that changed their assignment between consecutive months (expressed as the ratio of number of changes/total number of ORFs), for different metagenomes (Blue, whale fall; Red, human gut; Green, farm soil; Black, Sargasso sea). The changes are divided between new assignments (the ORF was previously unassigned, dashed lines) and assignment changes (assignment to a different taxon, solid lines). The figure also emphasizes three dates in which many assignments change, in accordance to the release of particular complete genomes of importance for the description of these microbial communities.