In this podcast, I talk to Mitchell Sogin, the Director of the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Wood's Hole, Massachusetts.

Dr. Sogin is one of the leaders of an ambitious project to survey the microbes of the ocean--which total over 36,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cells. Using the latest DNA-sequencing technology, Dr. Sogin and his colleagues are cataloging microbes from all over the world, and are discovering a genetic diversity in the microbial world far exceeding anyone's expectations.

Dr. Sogin explained how most species they find only exist in small numbers, while a minority of species dominate their samples. Dr. Sogin is investigating how this "rare biosphere" changes the way we understand how the ocean's ecosystems work.

Related Projects:

International Census of Marine Microbes

Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health