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OCEAN BIOGEOCHEMISTRY

Shunt or shuttle

Nature Geoscience volume 14, pages 181–183 (2021)Cite this article

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Nutrient availability influences the susceptibility of marine primary producers to viral infection. For diatoms in iron-limited waters, reduced infection rates impact marine biogeochemical cycles by enhancing the flux of material to depth.

Viruses are ubiquitous on Earth. Some viruses cause severe diseases in humans, but others can play crucial roles in our environment. In the ocean, viruses are the most abundant lifeform — around 1023 viral infections occur every second1. Oceanic viruses help to recycle material, bursting cells open to release essential nutrients back into the seawater and making them available again for marine microbes, killing 25 to 50% of the newly generated marine microbial biomass each day1. They can be preferential as to who they infect, and organisms can exhibit varied susceptibility to their infection. Writing in Nature Geoscience, Kranzler and colleagues2 show that a key group of photosynthetic marine protists, diatoms, are less susceptible to viral infection and suffer slower deaths when starved of the essential nutrient iron. The delayed mortality of diatoms from viral infection may enhance the flux of material into the deep sea, and the sequestration of carbon dioxide in the ocean.

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Fig. 1: Fate of carbon and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) fixed by infected diatoms.

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  1. Lyell Centre, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

    Alex J. Poulton

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  1. Alex J. Poulton
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Correspondence to Alex J. Poulton.

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Poulton, A.J. Shunt or shuttle. Nat. Geosci. 14, 181–183 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00718-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00718-z

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