NanoSIMS and stable isotope probing (nanoSIP) to characterize viral carbon cycling in soil
Abstract
We hypothesize that viruses have a significant role in soil carbon cycling and are developing methods and the tools to characterize their roles. Stable isotope probing in combination with high-spatial resolution imaging mass spectrometry with a NanoSIMS 50, "nanoSIP", has the potential to provide data on the distribution of activity of soil viruses, including rates of microbial lysis and virus production, the percentage of active viruses, the quantity of microbial C liberated, and the fate of the carbon. In previous work, we and others have shown that nanoSIP has sufficient sensitivity to quantify the isotopic enrichment of larger viruses (>100 nm diameter). However, that work indicated that analysis of bacterial viruses (phage) would be challenging to characterize because of their small size (down to 50 nm diameter). We have demonstrated the ability to extract viral particles from isotope tracer experiments in the lab and field and detect 13C and 18O enrichment in those samples. We are currently optimizing sample preparation methods for soil, developing more sensitive NanoSIMS methods, and cultivating bacteriophage from the order Caudovirales as a reference sample for method development. We will present our conceptual framework and latest results.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B52B..05W
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0448 Geomicrobiology;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0454 Isotopic composition and chemistry;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0465 Microbiology: ecology;
- physiology and genomics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES