Functional repertoire convergence of distantly related eukaryotic plankton lineages abundant in the sunlit ocean
Tom O. Delmont, Morgan Gaïa, Damien Daniel Hinsinger, Paul Frémont, Chiara Vanni, Antonio Fernàndez-Guerra, A. Murat Eren, Artem Kourlaiev, Léo d’Agata, Quentin Clayssen, Émilie Villar, Karine Labadie, Corinne Cruaud, Julie Poulain, Corinne Da Silva, Marc Wessner, Benjamin Noël, Jean‐Marc Aury, Shinichi Sunagawa, Silvia G. Acinas, Peer Bork, Eric Karsenti, Chris Bowler, Christian Sardet, Lars Stemmann, Colomban de Vargas, Patrick Wincker, Magali Lescot, Marcel Babin, Gabriel Gorsky, Nigel Grimsley, Lionel Guidi, Pascal Hingamp, Olivier Jaillon, Stefanie Kandels, Daniele Iudicone, Hiroyuki Ogata, Stéphane Pesant, Matthew B. Sullivan, Fabrice Not, Lee Karp‐Boss, Emmanuel Boss, Guy Cochrane, Michael Follows, Nicole Poulton, Jeroen Raes, Mike Sieracki, Sabrina Speich, Colomban de Vargas, Chris Bowler, Eric Karsenti, Éric Pelletier, Patrick Wincker, Olivier Jaillon
Abstract
Marine planktonic eukaryotes play critical roles in global biogeochemical cycles and climate. However, their poor representation in culture collections limits our understanding of the evolutionary history and genomic underpinnings of planktonic ecosystems. Here, we used 280 billion Tara Oceans metagenomic reads from polar, temperate, and tropical sunlit oceans to reconstruct and manually curate more than 700 abundant and widespread eukaryotic environmental genomes ranging from 10 Mbp to 1.3 Gbp. This genomic resource covers a wide range of poorly characterized eukaryotic lineages that complement long-standing contributions from culture collections while better representing plankton in the upper layer of the oceans. We performed the first, to our knowledge, comprehensive genome-wide functional classification of abundant unicellular eukaryotic plankton, revealing four major groups connecting distantly related lineages. Neither trophic modes of plankton nor its vertical evolutionary history could completely explain the functional repertoire convergence of major eukaryotic lineages that coexisted within oceanic currents for millions of years.