Department of Biology, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543.
Appl Environ Microbiol. 1993 Oct;59(10):3393-9. doi: 10.1128/aem.59.10.3393-3399.1993.
Recent reports documenting very high viral abundances in seawater have led to increased interest in the role of viruses in aquatic environments and a resurgence of the hypothesis that viruses are significant agents of bacterial mortality. Synechococcus spp., small unicellular cyanobacteria that are important primary producers at the base of the marine food web, were used to assess this hypothesis. We isolated a diverse group of Synechococcus phages that at times reach titers of between 10 and 10 cyanophages per ml in both inshore and offshore waters. However, despite their diversity and abundance, we present evidence in support of the hypothesis that lytic phages have a negligible effect in regulating the densities of marine Synechococcus populations. Our results indicate that these bacterial communities are dominated by cells resistant to their co-occurring phages and that these viruses are maintained by scavenging on the relatively rare sensitive cells in these communities.
最近有报道称海水中存在非常高的病毒丰度，这使得人们对病毒在水生环境中的作用产生了更大的兴趣，并重新提出了病毒是细菌死亡率的重要因素这一假说。我们使用聚球藻（Synechococcus spp.）来评估这一假说，聚球藻是一种小型单细胞蓝藻，是海洋食物网底层的重要初级生产者。我们分离到了一群多样性的聚球藻噬菌体，它们在近岸和远岸水域中的滴度有时可达 10 到 10 噬菌斑/ml。然而，尽管它们具有多样性和丰度，我们提供的证据支持这样的假说，即裂解噬菌体对调节海洋聚球藻种群的密度几乎没有影响。我们的结果表明，这些细菌群落主要由对其共存噬菌体具有抗性的细胞所主导，而这些病毒则通过吞噬这些群落中相对较少的敏感细胞来维持。
