A BGI-Research led international team identifies over 20,000 new species from marine metagenome sequences

https://en.genomics.cn/news-6989.html

http://en.people.cn/n3/2024/0910/c90000-20217141.html

A collaborative team of scientists from China’s BGI-Research, Britain, and Denmark has constructed a comprehensive global marine microbiome database. For five years, nearly 240 terabytes of publicly available marine metagenomic data were analysed and a database containing 43,191 metagenome-assembled genomes and 2.46 billion gene sequences was built. More than 20,000 of these genomes were identified as potential novel species.

The research team also uncovered three new polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic-degrading enzymes, one of which can degrade PET plastic film within three days, with the degradation rate reaching 83 percent.