Active and diverse viruses persist in the deep sub-seafloor sediments over thousands of years

Cai, Lanlan, Jørgensen, Bo B., Suttle, Curtis A., He, Maoqiu, Cragg, Barry A., Jiao, Nianzhi and Zhang, Rui 2019. Active and diverse viruses persist in the deep sub-seafloor sediments over thousands of years. The ISME Journal: Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology 13 (7) , pp. 1857-1864. 10.1038/s41396-019-0397-9

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Abstract

Viruses are ubiquitous and cause significant mortality in marine bacterial and archaeal communities. Little is known about the role of viruses in the sub-seafloor biosphere, which hosts a large fraction of all microbes on Earth. We quantified and characterized viruses in sediments from the Baltic Sea. The results show that the Baltic Sea sub-seafloor biosphere harbors highly abundant viruses with densities up to 1.8 × 1010 viruses cm−3. High potential viral production down to 37 meters below seafloor in ca. 6000-years-old sediments and infected prokaryotic cells visible by transmission electron microscopy demonstrate active viral infection. Morphological and molecular data indicate that the highly diverse community of viruses includes both allochthonous input from the overlying seawater and autochthonous production. The detection of cyanophage-like sequences showed that viruses of phototrophic hosts may persist in marine sediments for thousands of years. Our results imply that viruses influence sub-seafloor microbial community dynamics and thereby affect biogeochemical processes in the sub-seafloor biosphere.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences Engineering
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Type: cc-by
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	1751-7362
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 January 2024
Date of Acceptance:	28 February 2019
Last Modified:	15 Jan 2024 09:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/165490

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