Functional repertoire convergence of distantly related eukaryotic plankton lineages abundant in the sunlit ocean

18 pages, 4 figures, supplemental information https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100123.-- Data and code availability: • All data our study generated are publicly available at http://www.genoscope.cns.fr/tara/. The link provides access to the 11 raw metagenomic co-assemblies, the FASTA files for 713 MAGs and SAGs, the ∼10 million protein-coding sequences (nucleotides, amino acids and gff format), and the curated DNA-dependent RNA polymerase genes (MAGs and SAGs and METdb transcriptomes). This link also provides access to the supplemental figures and the Supplemental material. Finally, code development within anvi’o for the BUSCO single copy core genes is available at https://github.com/merenlab/anvio. • Original code has been deposited at Zenodo and is publicly available. The accession number is listed in the key resources table. • Any additional information required to reanalyze the data reported in this paper is available from the lead contact upon request

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

Tara Oceans (which includes the Tara Oceans and Tara Oceans Polar Circle expeditions) would not exist without the leadership of the Tara Ocean Foundation and the continuous support of 23 institutes (https://oceans.taraexpeditions.org/). We thank the commitment of the following people and sponsors who made this singular expedition possible: CNRS (in particular Groupement de Recherche GDR3280 and the Research Federation for the Study of Global Ocean Systems Ecology and Evolution FR2022/Tara GOSEE), the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Genoscope/CEA, the French Ministry of Research and the French Governement ‘Investissement d’Avenir’ programs Oceanomics (ANR-11-BTBR-0008), FRANCE GENOMIQUE (ANR-10-INBS-09), ATIGE Genopole postdoctoral fellowship, HYDROGEN/ANR-14-CE23-0001, MEMO LIFE (ANR-10-LABX-54), PSL Research University (ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02) and EMBRC-France (ANR-10-INBS-02), Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders, VIB, Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, UNIMIB, ANR (projects ALGALVIRUS ANR-17-CE02- 0012, PHYTBACK/ANR-2010-1709-01, POSEIDON/ANR-09-BLAN-0348, PROMETHEUS/ANR-09-PCS-GENM-217, TARA-GIRUS/ANR-09-PCS-GENM-218), EU FP7 (MicroB3/No. 287589, IHMS/HEALTH-F4-2010-261376), Genopole, CEA DRF Impulsion program, OCEANOMICS (project no. ANR-11-BTBR-0008), ERC Advanced Award Diatomic (grant agreement No 835067) to CB. The authors also thank Agnès B. and E. Bourgois, the Prince Albert II de Monaco Foundation, the Veolia Foundation, the EDF Foundation, Region Bretagne, Lorient Agglomeration, Worldcourier, Illumina, Serge Ferrari, and the Fonds Francais pour l'Environnement Mondial for support and commitment. [...] Part of the computations were performed using the platine, titane, and curie HPC machine provided through GENCI grants (t2011076389, t2012076389, t2013036389, t2014036389, t2015036389, and t2016036389

With the institutional support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S)

Peer reviewed