" Biomarks" is a mega explorative-scientific project with the aim of exploring the protist diversity in european coasts (from the Artic ocean to the Black Sea, through Norway, France, Spain and Italy).

This work is a collaboration with "Biomarks" where researchers analyzed their 18S metabarcoding high-throughput sequencing data to understand the diversity of non-metazoan, non-fungi opisthokonts. By creating a manually curated and phylogenetically-driven 18S opisthokont database researchers delineated the diversity and abundance of the different opisthokont lineages along the European coast. They show that there is a great diversity of choanoflagellates, ichthyosporeans, and the uncultured marine opisthokonts (MAFO) lineage in open waters and/or sediments. They also describe a novel lineage of marine fonticulids (MAFO), which appears to be very abundant in sediments and whose only so far described species was terrestrial. Overall, researchers demonstrate the potential of high-throughput sequencing to unravel the biodiversity of marine environments.

Reference Article: Campo, J., Mallo, D., Massana R., de Vargas C., Richards, T.A., Ruiz-Trillo, I. 2015. Diversity and distribution of unicellular opisthokonts along the European coast analysed using high-throughput sequencing. Environmental Microbiology doi:10.1111/1462-2920.12759