Publication Date:
2008-08-30
Description:
Viruses are the most abundant biological organisms of the world's oceans. Viral infections are a substantial source of mortality in a range of organisms-including autotrophic and heterotrophic plankton-but their impact on the deep ocean and benthic biosphere is completely unknown. Here we report that viral production in deep-sea benthic ecosystems worldwide is extremely high, and that viral infections are responsible for the abatement of 80% of prokaryotic heterotrophic production. Virus-induced prokaryotic mortality increases with increasing water depth, and beneath a depth of 1,000 m nearly all of the prokaryotic heterotrophic production is transformed into organic detritus. The viral shunt, releasing on a global scale approximately 0.37-0.63 gigatonnes of carbon per year, is an essential source of labile organic detritus in the deep-sea ecosystems. This process sustains a high prokaryotic biomass and provides an important contribution to prokaryotic metabolism, allowing the system to cope with the severe organic resource limitation of deep-sea ecosystems. Our results indicate that viruses have an important role in global biogeochemical cycles, in deep-sea metabolism and the overall functioning of the largest ecosystem of our biosphere.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Danovaro, Roberto -- Dell'Anno, Antonio -- Corinaldesi, Cinzia -- Magagnini, Mirko -- Noble, Rachel -- Tamburini, Christian -- Weinbauer, Markus -- England -- Nature. 2008 Aug 28;454(7208):1084-7. doi: 10.1038/nature07268.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Marine Science, Faculty of Science, Polytechnic University of Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy. r.danovaro@univpm.it〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18756250" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Biomass
;
Carbon/metabolism
;
*Ecosystem
;
Geologic Sediments/virology
;
Heterotrophic Processes
;
Hydrostatic Pressure
;
Microbial Viability
;
Oceans and Seas
;
Prokaryotic Cells/cytology/metabolism/virology
;
Seawater/*virology
;
*Virus Physiological Phenomena
;
Viruses/isolation & purification/metabolism
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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