Authors
K Eric Wommack, Jacques Ravel, Russell T Hill, Jongsik Chun, Rita R Colwell
Publication date
1999/1/1
Journal
Applied and Environmental Microbiology
Volume
65
Issue
1
Pages
231-240
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Description
Recognition of viruses as the most abundant component of aquatic microbial communities has stimulated investigations of the impact of viruses on bacterio- and phytoplankton host communities. From results of field studies to date, it is concluded that in most aquatic environments, a reduction in the number of bacteria on a daily basis is caused by viral infection. However, the modest amount of in situ virus-mediated mortality may be less significant than viral infection serving to maintain clonal diversity in the host communities directly, through gene transmission (i.e., transduction), and indirectly, by elimination of numerically dominant host species. If the latter mechanism for controlling community diversity prevails, then the overall structure of aquatic viral communities would be expected to change as well over short seasonal and spatial scales. To determine whether this occurs, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE …
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Scholar articles
KE Wommack, J Ravel, RT Hill, J Chun, RR Colwell - Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 1999