Characterizing the biodiversity of the ocean is an immense task. In 2009, a team of international scientists working for the Tara Ocean Foundation set out on a mission to study uncharted marine biodiversity. “There are about 1 million microbial cells per milliliter of seawater. With approximately 70% of the planet being covered by seawater, it's beyond comprehension the number of organisms we're talking about,” said Lucas Paoli, a microbiologist at the Pasteur Institute and the lead author of the study. Based on a metagenomics approach of piecing together each organism's genome from DNA fragments recovered from the seawater, their latest findings, published in Nature, report two biosynthetic pathways that could produce potential new drugs.

Kristel Tjandra, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University (U.S.) studying multidrug-resistant bacteria

Drug Discovery News
October 6, 2023