Arctic Ocean Is A Virus Hot Spot, Global Survey Says

After three-year sail around the oceans of the world, scientists discovered that the Arctic is the melting pot where most of the world’s viruses can be found.

According to a new study, 195,728 virus species were identified from the water samples collected during the three-year expedition around the globe. Samples were derived from the five global regions that are home to distinct viral communities. It is almost 12 times the number found in the previously conducted survey. Most of the virus species discovered from the expedition are exclusively found in the Arctic Ocean.

The findings were based on the report of the Tara Ocean global oceanographic research expedition. Researchers dropped the Tara, a tank of an aluminum sailboat, at waters zero to 4,000 meters below sea level. Scientists isolated and collected viruses from water, which were then compared through genetic studies.

Most of the identified viruses are bacteriophages, a type of virus that only attacks bacteria, not humans.

“So you can swim in the ocean and not worry about it,” Ahmed Zayed, a microbiologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, said.

Bacteriophages and other viruses are known to kill bacteria in the ocean. They release carbon back to the ocean that benefits other microorganisms.

According to Science News, viruses may serve an important role in counteracting human-induced climate change by indirectly stashing away carbon in this way, though viruses have rarely been included in climate simulations. For this reason, global mapping of viruses aids scientists locates where the decline of carbon occurs and design more accurate climate simulations.

“There’s still swaths of the ocean that haven’t been looked at such as the Western Pacific,” Curtis Suttle, an environmental virologist at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver who wasn’t involved in the study, said.

This means that we still have limited understanding of viral communities.

Also, the research involved the identification of DNA of viral species, thus excluding the viruses that only carry RNA from the study. “So we’re still really only scratching the surface of what’s there,” Suttle said.

The research was published in the Journal of Cell on April 25.