Our grantee, Matthew Sullivan, Assistant Professor, Departments of Microbiology and Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering at Ohio State and the co-founder of the Ecosystems Genomics Institute at the University of Arizona, speaks with Mrs. Green’s World about viruses in our world’s largest ecosystem: the ocean.
Sullivan points out that there are a lot of viruses in the ocean (50 million in a mouthful of sea water!), but we really didn’t know a lot about them. Viruses in the ocean, he says, play a critical role to the oxygen we breathe. In fact, through his work in microbial sciences, Sullivan is learning that viruses encode photosynthesis genes. Interestingly, a virus has found a way to interact with its cells so that when it takes them over, the virus makes sure all the machinery it will need to make more viruses is there. At any given time a third of the cells in the oceans are infected by viruses and many that are photosynthetic are producing the oxygen we need.
Hear more about the importance of viruses in the ocean from Matthew Sullivan in his interview with Mrs. Green’s World here.
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