The International Census of Marine Microbes is a field project of the

Census of Marine Life The Census of Marine Life was a 10-year, US $650 million scientific initiative, involving a global network of researchers in more than 80 nations, engaged to assess and explain the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans. Th ...

that inventories microbial diversity by cataloging all known diversity of single-cell

organisms In biology, an organism () is any life, living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy (biology), taxonomy into groups such as Multicellular o ...

including

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one Cell (biology), biological cell. They constitute a large domain (biology), domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometr ...

, Archaea,

Protista A protist () is any eukaryotic organism (that is, an organism whose cells contain a cell nucleus) that is not an animal, plant, or fungus. While it is likely that protists share a common ancestor (the last eukaryotic common ancestor), the exc ...

, and associated

viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's ...

, exploring and discovering unknown microbial diversity, and placing that knowledge into ecological and evolutionary contexts. The ICoMM program, led by

Mitchell Sogin Dr. Mitchell Sogin is a distinguished senior scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, whose research investigates the evolution and diversity of single-celled organisms. Career Dr. Sogin obtained a BS in Chemist ...

, has discovered that marine microbial diversity is some 10 to 100 times more than expected, and the vast majority are previously unknown, low abundance organisms thought to play an important role in the oceans.

References

External links

ICoMM Website
Marine biology {{biology-stub