Poster Presentation Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution Conference 2016

Evolutionary insights from the marine metagenomics in the Red Sea (#579)

Katsuhiko Mineta 1 , Yoshimoto Saito 1 , Intikhab Alam 1 , Hayedeh Behzad 1 , Mohamed Alarawi 1 , Muhammad S Amini 1 , Hajime Ohyanagi 1 , Magbubah Essack 1 , John Archer 1 , Vladimir Bajic 1 , Takashi Gojobori 1
  1. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

The Red Sea is the world's northernmost tropical sea, positioned between Africa (African continent) and Asia (Arabian Peninsula). The Red Sea has several unique features; high temperature, high salinity, and low nutrient level. These features are characteristic of harsh environments that compel organisms’ to adapt in order to survive or become extinct. Not much is known about the functional gene content and evolutionary process of the organisms in this harsh Red Sea environment. To better characterize the gene content and variability of its microbial community, we took an approach using metagenomics. Metagenomics is one of the technologies used to produce a large number of sequences from organisms in the environment, providing a comprehensive view into the marine microbial communities and their ecosystems. We have now been conducting the Red Sea metagenome project since 2014. Seawater and sediment samples were collected and sequenced on a monthly basis. We utilize these data to see the dynamics of the microbial community as well as to examine the species and genes in relation to the evolution. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of our Red Sea metagenome project and detail the outcome of our metagenomics analyses with the evolutionary insights.