Sampling sites of The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition - Journal

The Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) is an

ocean exploration Ocean exploration is a part of oceanography describing the exploration of ocean surfaces. Notable explorations were undertaken by the Greeks, the Romans, the Polynesians, the Phoenicians, Phytheas, Herodotus, the Vikings, the Portuguese and ...

genome project Genome projects are scientific endeavours that ultimately aim to determine the complete genome sequence of an organism (be it an animal, a plant, a fungus, a bacterium, an archaean, a protist or a virus) and to annotate protein-coding genes and o ...

whose goal is to assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities and to understand their role in nature's fundamental processes. It was begun as a Sargasso Sea pilot sampling project in August 2003;

Craig Venter John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biotechnologist and businessman. He is known for leading one of the first draft sequences of the human genome and assembled the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome. ...

announced the full expedition on 4 March 2004. The two-year journey, which used Craig Venter's personal yacht, originated in Halifax,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

circumnavigated Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical body (e.g. a planet or moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth. The first recorded circumnavigation of the Earth was the Magel ...

the globe and terminated in the U.S. in January 2006. The expedition sampled water from Halifax,

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

to the Eastern Tropical

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

. During 2007, sampling continued along the west coast of North America.

Data analysis

The GOS datasets were submitted to both

NCBI The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is approved and funded by the government of the United States. The ...

Global Ocean Sampling Expedition project at the J. Craig Venter Institute, Project ID 13694

National Center for Biotechnology Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is approved and funded by the government of the United States. The ...

, web site accessed 17 Mar 2007 and Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis (CAMERA), a new online resource for marine

metagenomics Metagenomics is the study of genetic material recovered directly from environmental or clinical samples by a method called sequencing. The broad field may also be referred to as environmental genomics, ecogenomics, community genomics or microb ...

funded by the

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is an American foundation established by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore and his wife Betty I. Moore in September 2000 to support scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements a ...

, developed by JCVI and hosted by

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

's Division of the

California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2, previously Cal(IT)2), also referred to as the Qualcomm Institute (QI) at its San Diego branch, is a $400 million academic research institution jointly run by the ...

(Calit2). CAMERA's toolset was developed by JCVI, and reflects the tools used in the initial publication of the GOS datasets.

Funding

The Sorcerer II effort has been funded by: * the

( sequencing and analysis)More than Six Million New Genes, Thousands of New Protein Families, and Incredible Degree of Microbial Diversity Discovered from First Phase of Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition
13 March 2007 Press Release, J. Craig Venter Institute * the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

Office of Science The Office of Science is a component of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). The Office of Science is the lead federal agency supporting fundamental scientific research for energy and the Nation’s largest supporter of basic research in t ...

(sequencing and analysis) * The J. Craig Venter Institute (vessel operation) * Moore Foundation seven-year, $24.5 million, grant (

CAMERA A camera is an optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), with a ...

)

Vessel

Sorcerer II, a 95-foot sloop, completed a 2-year scientific expedition circumnavigating the globe in mid latitudes collecting samples of microbes in seawater for genetic sequencing and cataloguing. She was designed to be not just a world cruising yacht, but one that would be capable of handling the extremes in latitudes, from equatorial heat and humidity to latitudes between 60 and 70 degrees. SORCERER II's construction is light for performance, but very strong, with her kevlar and E glass laminates, epoxy bonding and carefully chosen core materials. The vessel was designed by

German Frers German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

and carries of water.

Publications

The following list is of the official publications of the project and the J. Craig Venter Institute. * * * * * * * *

Notes

External links

*
Official blog of the 2009–10 legA large picture of Venter on the stern of the Sorcerer II

GOS data
{dead link, date=October 2017 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes from