Development and Bias Assessment of a Method for Targeted Metagenomic Sequencing of Marine Cyanobacteria

Abstract

ABSTRACTProchlorococcusandSynechococcusare the most abundant photosynthetic organisms in oligotrophic waters and responsible for a significant percentage of the earth's primary production. Here we developed a method for metagenomic sequencing of sortedProchlorococcusandSynechococcuspopulations using a transposon-based library preparation technique. First, we observed that the cell lysis technique and associated amount of input DNA had an important role in determining the DNA library quality. Second, we found that our transposon-based method provided a more even coverage distribution and matched more sequences of a reference genome than multiple displacement amplification, a commonly used method for metagenomic sequencing. We then demonstrated the method onProchlorococcusandSynechococcusfield populations from the Sargasso Sea and California Current isolated by flow cytometric sorting and found clear environmentally related differences in ecotype distributions and gene abundances. In addition, we saw a significant correspondence between metagenomic libraries sequenced with our technique and regular sequencing of bulk DNA. Our results show that this targeted method is a viable replacement for regular metagenomic approaches and will be useful for identifying the biogeography and genome content of specific marine cyanobacterial populations.