MM-OMICS

Ocean microbiomes, which inhabit the largest part of our biosphere covering 70% of the Earth‘s surface and an average depth of 3.5km, are vital to environmental and human health. Yet human-driven threats such as rising greenhouse gas emissions and related warming, freshening, deoxygenation, and acidification of the ocean are creating a perfect storm of environmental impacts affecting not only larger flora and fauna, but also microbial communities.

In this context, Tara expedition Mission Microbiomes launched in December 2020 is focusing on fundamental ecological gradients (often closer to land), applying an improved version of the Tara Oceans holistic protocol (i.e. by adding metaproteomics, metabolomics, and metamorphomics protocols to the TO metaB/G/T suite) at higher spatio-temporal density to uncover microbiome structures and dynamics at (sub)mesoscales. Mission Microbiomes consists of eight thematic sub-studies that cover fundamental ecological patterns and processes of the Atlantic Ocean.

This MM-OMICS project concerns three of these experiments, the rest being covered by funds from the AtlantECO project:

(i) The Tara MM Gayoso experiment: A holistic study of coccolithophore bloom dynamics.

(ii) The Tara MM Iceberg experiment: studying the impact of the increasing number of icebergs on the marine microbiome

(iii) The Tara MM Mesoscale experiment: dissecting the processes and effects of (sub)mesoscale phenomena on the South Atlantic Ocean microbiome