The ocean protects us, but it's under threat. The ocean is a source of potential innovations for human health; the richness and diversity of ocean microbiota must be inventoried.
Through the presence of cyanobacteria and protists such as diatoms, the ocean is the planet's main carbon sink and oxygen producer. The stresses and imbalances imposed on the oceans by current patterns of development and climate change are exposing them to the risk of failing to perform this and other primary functions to the required level. O2 production,CO2 elimination and global thermal regulation are essential direct factors affecting human health. Indirect effects are just as important: fishing and contamination of fish and seafood, transmission of toxins and infectious diseases. Conversely, ocean biodiversity can be a source of innovative molecules at a time when there is an urgent need to renew the composition of compound libraries studied by high-throughput screening methods. Over the last ten years, the Tara Ocean expedition has provided an unrivalled wealth of information on ocean microbiota. 40 million genes have been sequenced in the databases - a third of which were previously unknown and probably correspond to as many new species.
