EAS 1540 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Mass Wasting, Cyanobacteria
23 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Viruses have positive and negative effects on their hosts. Viruses are the most abundant biological entities on the planet. Viruses kill about half of all microbial plankton everyday. Viruses account for 50% of mortality of bacteria in the ocean. 10 viruses for every bacteria in the ocean. Metagenomics or metaviromics - random sequencing of short fragments of viral nucleic acids - can be used to study the diversity of viruses in aquatic ecosystems. Sea stars - wiped out by early 2014 by viruses in area. 12. 5% of atm c absorbed into ocean released by viruses daily. Marine viruses highly abundant and active components of marine ecosystems. Their impacts are both direct (encoding for important genes) and indirect (lysis of cells ad release of cellular contents) Most estimates converge on 10-50% of overall mortality of bacteria is from viruses. Viruses insert their own genes into other cells. Can insert photosynthesis genes into cells to make them do this.
