If you sort uniq first column from each file separetely first, then this is great idea, otherwise it assumes each file has only single entry for every element in the first columns. So if the first file was:
"OG0000000"
"OG0000001"
"OG0000003"
"OG0000003"
"OG0000005"
Instead. Your command line would output the result below, right?
"OG0000000"
"OG0000003"
"OG0000005"
That means there are more columns, not shown in your example?
Yes there are multiple columns but I want to take out the list of the first column in a separate file so that I can grep them from individual files later.
So it's not a problem to lose the other columns now? In that case, something like this: (not tested)
But this assumes your file is tab delimited.