We recently developed a new SST proxy (the TEX86) based on the relative distribution of tetraether membrane lipids derived from marine Crenarchaeota, a ubiquitous and omnipresent component of marine picoplankton.
We analysed these sequences, along with previously published marine prokaryotic genomes, in the context of marine metagenomic data, to gain insights into the ecology of the surface ocean prokaryotic picoplankton (0.1 - 3.0 μm size range).