Viruses don't breathe: Understanding ecosystem effects of viruses in marine oxygen minimum zones
Abstract
Oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) constitute ~7% of oceanic volume and the metabolic activity of their unique microbial communities is known to have significant impacts on global biogeochemical cycles. However, viral diversity and viral influence on microbial processes in these regions is much less studied. Here we describe viral community diversity and activity at two stations in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific (ETNP) OMZ region using both quantitative microscopy and metagenomic methods. While viral abundance decreased below the oxycline, viral diversity and lytic infection frequency remained high within the OMZ. Viral community composition was also strongly related to oxygen concentration, with the most unique viral populations found within the oxycline. Further, while many of the detected viral-encoded auxiliary metabolic gene (AMG) functional categories were found throughout the water column, their relative abundances changed substantially with depth, supporting the theory that viruses encode for AMGs attuned to their host metabolism. Together, this study shows that viruses are not only diverse and active throughout the water column in OMZ regions, but their infection of microorganisms has the potential to alter microbial metabolism within these biogeochemically important regions of the ocean.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.B54A..01B
- Keywords:
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- 0414 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0428 Carbon cycling;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0448 Geomicrobiology;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0465 Microbiology: ecology;
- physiology and genomics;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES