317M ocean gene clusters may be biotech boon, are “tip of the iceberg”
Researchers have identified 317 million unique gene clusters belonging to oceanic microbes. Creating the world’s largest open-source catalog representing only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ in marine metagenomics, the library offers a tool for exploring how these genetic resources could be used in medicine, energy, food and other industries.The ocean’s microbiome is a vast, highly diverse gene pool with complex metabolic capabilities. The global ocean genome has already proven to be a major resource for science, particularly in…