APPROPRIATE REFERENCE DATASETS ARE CRUCIAL FOR PROPER INTERPRETATION OF META-OMICS DATASETS

Marine food webs are primarily built upon diverse unicellular phytoplankton. Analysis of phytoplankton community structure using environmental ‘omics methods depend on comparisons to reference datasets. Therefore, our understanding of the taxonomy and function of a natural community depends on the quality and relevance of the reference datasets. Although the Pacific Ocean is the largest ecosystem on Earth, open ocean Pacific phytoplankton are woefully underrepresented in algal culture collections and sequencing datasets. Here I demonstrate how the addition of newly sequenced isolates in reference datasets alters our understanding of in situ microbial communities and their environmental adaptations. Using a metatranscriptomic analysis of flavodoxin expression in Pacific diatoms across environmental gradients and on-deck incubations in the North Pacific, I show the impact of these additions. Additionally, I isolated and characterized dozens of novel open-ocean Pacific phytoplankton strains^[1] that we are currently sequencing and adding to the next version of our Marine Functional EukaRyotic Reference Taxa (MarFERReT) dataset^[2]. We hope that ongoing community contribution to the MarFERReT dataset through its Github repository^[3] will enhance future analysis of phytoplankton’s data from diverse environments.   References: [1] Graff van Creveld, S., et al. (2024). Journal of Phycology. [2] Groussman, R. D., et al (2023). Scientific Data, 10(1), 926. [3] https://github.com/armbrustlab/marferret

Presentation Preference: Oral

Primary Presenter: Shiri Graff van Creveld, University of Washington (shirig@uw.edu)

Authors:

Shiri Graff van Creveld, University of Washington  (shirig@uw.edu)

Sacha Coesel, University of Washington  (coesel@uw.edu)

E. Virginia Armbrust, University of Washington  (shirig@uw.edu)