Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 27 August 2008 | Nature 454, 1038 (2008) | doi:10.1038/4541038a
News
Death and life beneath the sea floor
Viral action identified as key component in carbon cycle.
Viruses that infect microbes in deep-sea sediments may be a key driver in the world's largest ecosystem and integral to the global carbon cycle, data reveal.
Lytic viruses, which cause infected cells to burst, kill about 80% of the single-celled organisms in the sediment and sub-surface ocean layers, researchers calculate, thereby releasing large amounts of dissolved carbon into the deep seas1.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
There are currently no comments.
