BACKGROUND Marine ecosystems are composed of a diverse array of life forms, the
majority of which are unicellular—archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes. The power of these …

Phytoplankton are key players in the global carbon cycle, contributing about half of global
primary productivity. Within the phytoplankton, functional groups (characterized by distinct …

Current sampling of genomic sequence data from eukaryotes is relatively poor, biased, and
inadequate to address important questions about their biology, evolution, and ecology; this …

Coccolithophores have influenced the global climate for over 200 million years. These
marine phytoplankton can account for 20 per cent of total carbon fixation in some systems …

Protists are ubiquitous members of soil microbial communities, but the structure of these
communities, and the factors that influence their diversity, are poorly understood. We used …

Symbioses between nitrogen (N) 2–fixing prokaryotes and photosynthetic eukaryotes are
important for nitrogen acquisition in N-limited environments. Recently, a widely distributed …

Microbial eukaryotes are integral components of natural microbial communities, and their
inclusion is critical for many ecosystem studies, yet the majority of published metagenome …

Metagenomics literally means “beyond the genome.” Marine microbial metagenomic
databases presently comprise∼ 400 billion base pairs of DNA, only∼ 3% of that found in 1 …

Protists, which are single-celled eukaryotes, critically influence the ecology and chemistry of
marine ecosystems, but genome-based studies of these organisms have lagged behind …

Prochlorococcus is a key member of open-ocean primary producer communities. Despite its
importance, little is known about the predators that consume this cyanobacterium and make …