The marine microbiome through space and time

The ocean is the largest ecosystem in the Planet. But due to its size and depth, our understanding of the microbiome is still rudimentary. We can count how many microorganisms live in it and we can measure some of their activities. But we only have crude estimates of how many species do they belong to. The microbiome includes a few abundant taxa that carry out most ecosystem functions and a very long list of rare taxa that provide a formidable richness of genes and potential. Microbes can easily disperse globally and, intriguingly, they can also travel in time. Even though we have an emerging picture, the possibility of engineering the ocean microbiome is still very remote