Abstract

Viruses, most of which infect microorganisms, are the most abundant biological entities on the planet. Identifying and measuring the community dynamics of viruses in the environment is complicated because less than one percent of microbial hosts have been cultivated. Also, there is no single gene that is common to all viral genomes, so total uncultured viral diversity cannot be monitored using approaches analogous to ribosomal DNA profiling. Metagenomic analyses of uncultured viral communities circumvent these limitations and can provide insights into the composition and structure of environmental viral communities.

Author affiliations

1. Robert A. Edwards is at the Department of Biology, LS301, and the Center for Microbial Sciences, San Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Drive, San Diego, California 92182, USA, and at the Fellowship for Interpretation of Genomes, Chicago, Illinois 60527, USA.
2. Forest Rohwer is at the Department of Biology, LS301, and the Center for Microbial Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182, USA.

Correspondence to: Forest Rohwer² Email: forest@sunstroke.sdsu.edu

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