New microbes found on Pacific Ocean floor

WOODS HOLE, Maine, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- U.S. marine biologists have discovered thousands of new kinds of microbes at two deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon coast.

The discovery was made by scientists from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Maine, and the University of Washington’s Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean.

Using a new analytical technique called "454 tag sequencing," the scientists surveyed 1 million DNA sequences of bacteria and archaea. The DNA was taken from samples collected from two hydrothermal vents on the Pacific deep-sea volcano, Axial Seamount.

The researchers discovered that while there might be as few as 3,000 different kinds of archaea at those sites, the bacteria exceed 37,000 different kinds.

"Most of these bacteria had never been reported before, and hundreds were so different from known microbes that we could only identify them to the level of phylum," said lead author Julie Huber of the MBL. "Clearly, additional sampling of these communities will be necessary to determine the true diversity."

The research is reported in journal Science.