Miraculous catch of iron-sulfur protein sequences in the Sargasso Sea.

Recent shotgun sequencing of filtered Sargasso Sea water samples has yielded data in astounding amount and diversity. Iron-sulfur proteins, which are ancient, diverse and ubiquitous, have been implemented here to further probe the sequence diversity of the Sargasso Sea database (SSDB). Sequence searches and comparisons confirm that the SSDB by and large equals in diversity the combined currently available databases. The data thus suggest that microbial diversity has so far been underestimated by orders of magnitude.