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https://www.ft.com/content/4397152a-3309-11e9-bd3a-8b2a211d90d5
The trillions of marine viruses that inhabit the world’s oceans could be mobilised in the fight against climate change. New studies suggest that manipulating the viruses that infect most of the bacteria in the oceans enables the microbes to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which could be employed to tackle global warming. Viruses, known as phages, influence many aspects of their bacterial hosts’ behaviour, including the amount of carbon dioxide they absorb. This affects climate because bacteria in the oceans are an important “carbon sink”, removing warming gas from the atmosphere. “We have been asking which organisms drive carbon export into the oceans,” said Matt Sullivan, professor of microbiology at Ohio State University. “It turns out viruses best predict carbon absorption into the deep sea.” Before the Ohio team began investigating the effect of phage infection on marine microbes, it was assumed that viruses reduced the uptake of carbon dioxide in bacteria. The latest research shows that, on the contrary, infected bacteria absorb more carbon, which then sinks to the ocean floor. The earth has already warmed about 1C since pre-industrial times, and almost all the countries in the world have pledged to limit global warming to less than 2C — a level that would require drastically cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions. If the oceans that cover 70 per cent of the earth’s surface can be harnessed to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere it could help to slow down the warming process. “There is already talk of developing bioreactors to grow suitable viruses and seed the oceans with them to increase carbon uptake,” Prof Sullivan told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington. “People are thinking about the engineering that would be needed to do this at scale. But first we need to make sure we understand the cell-virus interactions.” Disentangling the vast number of different bacteria and viruses that coexist in the oceans is a formidable research challenge. A millilitre of seawater, about a fifth of a teaspoon, typically contains about 10m bacteria, within which live 100m even smaller viruses. Alison Buchan, a microbiology professor at the University of Tennessee, has studied one group of bacteria called roseobacter, which are among the most important marine microbes.
PHAGElogist 