Scientists have discovered that coral reefs contain diverse communities of microbes, many previously unknown, that produce compounds with potential uses in medicine and biotechnology. The findings come from a large-scale study across the Pacific.
An international team examined microbiome samples from 99 coral reefs across 32 Pacific islands. They reconstructed the genomes of 645 microbial species, more than 99 percent of which had never been genetically described before. These microbes live closely with coral hosts and include a wider range of biosynthetic gene clusters than recorded elsewhere in the ocean.