College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg, Florida 33701, USA.
Ann Rev Mar Sci. 2012;4:425-48. doi: 10.1146/annurev-marine-120709-142805.
Over the past two decades, marine virology has progressed from a curiosity to an intensely studied topic of critical importance to oceanography. At concentrations of approximately 10 million viruses per milliliter of surface seawater, viruses are the most abundant biological entities in the oceans. The majority of these viruses are phages (viruses that infect bacteria). Through lysing their bacterial hosts, marine phages control bacterial abundance, affect community composition, and impact global biogeochemical cycles. In addition, phages influence their hosts through selection for resistance, horizontal gene transfer, and manipulation of bacterial metabolism. Recent work has also demonstrated that marine phages are extremely diverse and can carry a variety of auxiliary metabolic genes encoding critical ecological functions. This review is structured as a scientific "truth or dare," revealing several well-established "truths" about marine viruses and presenting a few "dares" for the research community to undertake in future studies.
在过去的二十年中，海洋病毒学已经从一个好奇心发展成为一个备受关注的重要研究课题，对海洋学具有至关重要的意义。在每毫升表层海水中，病毒的浓度约为 1000 万个，是海洋中最丰富的生物实体。这些病毒大多数是噬菌体（感染细菌的病毒）。通过裂解其细菌宿主，海洋噬菌体控制着细菌的丰度，影响着群落的组成，并影响着全球生物地球化学循环。此外，噬菌体还通过选择抗性、水平基因转移和操纵细菌代谢来影响其宿主。最近的研究还表明，海洋噬菌体具有极高的多样性，并且可以携带多种辅助代谢基因，这些基因编码着关键的生态功能。本综述采用科学的“真心话大冒险”的形式，揭示了一些关于海洋病毒的已确立的“事实”，并为研究界提出了一些未来研究中需要承担的“挑战”。
