Genomic and Metagenomic insights into the lifestyle and the diversity of small planktonic species

Planktonic eukaryotes are keystone players in the global carbon cycle, yet knowledge about their biology and lifestyle is late. This is not surprising since we are still actively investigating species richness, within these very diverse organisms. Phytoplankter are difficult to isolate and grow in the lab, so that direct analysis of their DNA sequence is the unique way to gain knowledge into their biology, diversity and lifestyle.

During this talk, I will present some bioinformatic analysis of genomic and metagenomic data to infer some aspects of the biology, diversity and lifestyle of one of the smallest planktonic cells : Ostreococcus tauri, a marine green alga.