Marine Viruses Impact On Ocean Bacteria

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acterial carbon to protistan grazers, and a 7% decrease in macrozooplankton production" (7). Hence, marine viral activity moves more respiration and production away from the other heterotrophs and into the bacteria. Marine viruses also have an impact on the diversity observed in the bacterial community and the composition of the species in the ocean as they usually are highly specific for certain hosts. The impact of viruses on ocean biogeochemistry is often evoked purely through the act of host lysis, but very few studies have considered the chemical contributions of the viral particles themselves. Recent studies show that the marine virus particles contain significant amount of macronutrients (Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorous) and that the …show more content…
The Scientists infected one of the smallest and most abundant photosynthetic microbes on the plant Synechococcus, with cyanophages that belonged to either the Red sea or the English channel. Initially the bacteria was fed bicarbonate and baking soda which contained CO2, they used baking soda that contained radioactive carbon as this enabled them to accurately measure how much carbon the bacteria was fixing. After a couple of hours the scientists brought in the viruses, the result of which was that carbon fixation stopped, and reported that bacteria which were infected with the phages of the English Channel and Red Sea fixed 4.8 to 2.3 less carbon as compared to the hosts that were uninfected, and that carbon fixation dropped regardless of the amount of light available to the bacteria. The scientists discovered that a drop in carbon fixation did not originate in the early photosynthetic processes, when they found that cyanobacteria made use of sunlight to produce energy and that both infected and infected cells converted sunlight into energy, however, the viruses took part in and interfered in the later stages of photosynthetic process when the bacteria usually uses the energy from the sunlight to fix inorganic carbon by transforming it into organic sugars. In these later stages, the marine viruses direct the energy from sunlight towards their own reproduction and prevent the bacteria from fixing the …show more content…
Although marine viruses infect marine organisms ranging from crustaceans to whales, we know little about the modes of their transmission and infection. Some of these marine viruses pose potential health risks to humans. For example,viruses such as calci and distemper are known to circulate between marine and terrestrial mammals and some of them are also thought of causing disease in humans. Furthermore, there are many evidences which indicate that marine birds harbor avian flu, particularly the dangerous H5N1 virus strain (11). Although, we possess little knowledge and understanding of the natural reservoirs of the viruses, and their potential to spread to terrestrial systems, nevertheless, our emerging knowledge of the huge diversity of the viruses in the ocean suggests that the oceans are the potential reservoirs of many unknown causative agents of

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