The Science

Using advanced nanotechnologies, OGAP will decipher the composition of millions of organisms down to individual cells at virtually any oceanic location and deploy artificial intelligence to process such massive datasets targeting predictions of living forms and functions.  The resulting Ocean Genome Atlas will be an unbiased genomic blueprint of the global biodiversity of the world’s oceans at a resolution never achieved to date: from cells to ecosystems.

OGAP’s vessels will be capable of deep transcriptome, genome and metagenomic sequencing, metabolomics and proteomics microanalyses allowing for the:

  • Documentation of biodiversity levels yielding a baseline of global marine life including plankton food webs through the metagenomic single-cell analysis of many thousands of planktonic, pelagic and benthic organisms transecting all of the world’s oceans.

  • Tracing of the evolutionary history of previously unknown species, cells and tissues while also revealing patterns of interactions between organisms across multiple marine environments.

  • Discovery and classification of potentially millions of novel biologically active molecules that could be used as prototypes for future drug development.

The resulting Atlas will dramatically expand the understanding of the evolution of life by increasing at least tenfold our knowledge of the world’s oceans including the enigmatic diversity of marine organisms.

The OGAP Science Committee will establish the scientific objectives and protocols for each section of the OGAP circumnavigation. 

Sampling Management 

Deploying mobile laboratories on SRV Morpheus and subsequent OGAP vessels as well as partner and volunteer vessels, small teams of scientists and crew will undertake 3-5 large-scale samplings per day per vessel of plankton, pelagic and benthic habitats (up to 4-5,000 species and one million cells per week) from polar regions to the equator. The sampling voyages will transect the hotspots of marine biodiversity, including the Coral Triangle and Antarctica.

OGAP expects to find representative samples of all animal phyla, classes, and the majority of orders and families  as well as the majority of eukaryotic lineages. The resulting analysis will result in detailed cell-type atlases for hundreds of representative lineages, producing the first cell-type tree of life.

Genomic Data Analysis 

To process such massive datasets OGAP will partner with the University of Florida and utilize one of the most powerful public institution supercomputers in the U.S. with an expected 700 petaflops of AI enhanced performance. We envision establishing a Periodic System of Cell Types/Phenotypes – an analog of the Periodic System of Chemical Elements with a predictive power of biological outcomes and environmental diagnostics for marine ecosystems. Unsupervised machine learning for gene/transcriptome/genome/phenotype clustering will be performed together with advanced cyberinfrastructure.

Collaborating Institutions 

OGAP coordinates research projects and teams with leading universities and research centers around the globe including the Whitney Laboratory of the Marine Biosciences at the University of Florida and partner institutions in the US, Europe, Norway, Japan and Australia.