Novel Microbial Diversity and Functional Potential in the Marine Mammal Oral Microbiome (Current Biology)

Dudek et al. reconstruct genomes from previously uncharacterized microbes living in the dolphin mouth. Three of these genomes represent two new phyla, and 22 come from members of nine relatively unexplored candidate phyla. Novel taxonomic diversity in the community is accompanied by novel functional diversity, such as unusual CRISPR-Cas9 systems.