4: Microbial Diversity -Making sense of Microbial Diversity Flashcards
(8 cards)
1
Q
what are the two ways to describe microbial diversity?
A
- Phylogenetic diversity
- Functional diversity
2
Q
How does phylogenetic diversity work?
A
- Microbes are grouped into phyla based on evolutionary relationships, plotted on phylogenetic trees
- Most often based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence (since all cellular life has this bc all cellular life has ribosomes)
3
Q
how does functional diversity work?
A
- Groups microbes** based on the activies** they carry out (but begins by grouping organisms based on phylogenetics)
- ex. Anoxygenic phototrophs
4
Q
what makes it difficult to make sense of microbial diversity
A
- most prokaryotes cannot be cultured in the lab (so far)
- only some phyla are well studied in the lab
- some are known only from 16S sequences or metagenomic studies (we don’t know their behaviour)
5
Q
what phylum is the most well studied
A
Proteobacteria is most well studied but we’re only able to study half in pure culture.
6
Q
what do the red dots represent on the newest tree of life?
A
Red dots represent the phyla only known from metagenome sequencing -in diverse environmental samples (aka they were not studied in lab)
7
Q
how many named bacterial phyla and archael phyla does the new tree of life contain?
A
92 named bacteria phyla ad 26 archael phyla
8
Q
how many of the eukaryotic supergroups does the newest tree of life contain
A
all five of the eukaryotic supergroups
