Giant viruses found on the Greenland ice sheet probably regulate the growth of snow algae on the ice by infecting them. Knowing how to control these viruses could help us reduce the rate of ice-melt.
Every spring when the sun rises in the Arctic after months of darkness, life returns. The polar bears pop up from their winter lairs, the arctic tern soar back from their long journey south and the musk oxen wade north.
She suspects that the viruses feed on the snow algae and could work as a natural control mechanism on the algae blooms. "We analyzed samples from dark ice, red snow and melting holes . In both the dark ice and red snow we found signatures of active giant viruses. And that is the first time they've been found on surface ice and snow containing a high abundance of pigmented microalgae.
"The way we discovered the viruses was by analyzing all the DNA in the samples we took. By sifting through this huge dataset looking for specific marker genes, we found sequences that have high similarity to known giant viruses," she explains. But in order to use those recipes, the virus needs to transcribe them from double-stranded DNA to single stranded mRNA.
Virology Extreme Survival Microbiology Snow And Avalanches Global Warming Ice Ages Climate
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