Four years of expeditions have collected 35,000 plankton samples with the hope of understanding what the oceans will be in 50 or 100 years.
Plankton are organisms that affect climate at the regulation of rainfall, for example, which means that there is a close interaction between the planktonic life in the oceans and climate. The plankton organisms also generate half of the oxygen we breathe. Studying plankton is something very important.
Thus, for four years, the Tara Oceans has traveled the seas of the globe to collect 35,000 plankton samples. These levies are starting to deliver their first secrets.
As explained Chris Bowler, has already allowed researchers from CNRS, the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA) and the European Molecular Biology laboratory (EMBL) to list 40 million microbial genes, genes of which two thirds have functions that are not yet known so far.
The researcher explains that this allows to achieve a description fuller planktonic ecosystems, an invisible world and very difficult to study because the organisms are very small. The composition of these ecosystems has been described as the most comprehensive so far, as well as the genetic heritage of certain bodies.
While these organisms are very sensitive to climate change, it will now be possible to make predictions on the state of the ocean in a century to know what will be the impacts of changes in temperature, acidification of the oceans, melting ice …
“With information provided by the Tara, we will better understand how the ocean will be in 50 or 100 years. But we still have at least ten years of work ahead of us, we have described a thousand samples from 35 000 reported, “says Chris Bowler yet
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