Photosynthetic picoplankton

They revealed a very wide diversity[10][11] and brought to light the importance of the following groups in the picoplankton: In temperate coastal environment, the genus Micromonas (Prasinophyceae) seems dominant.

Thirty years ago, it was hypothesized that the speed of division for micro-organisms in central oceanic ecosystems was very slow, of the order of one week or one month per generation.

In 1988, two American researchers, Carpenter and Chang, suggested estimating the speed of cell division of phytoplankton by following the course of DNA replication by microscopy.

This allowed researchers to establish that picoplankton cells are highly synchronous: they replicate their DNA and then divide all at the same time at the end of the day.

In parallel, genome analyses begin to be done directly from oceanic samples (ecogenomics or metagenomics),[25] allowing us to access to large sets of gene for uncultivated organisms.