Viruses are well jazz for their power to hijack innkeeper cells and make them do their summons , namely replicating themselves before abound out to hound down more unlucky victim . One computer virus , however , has been found to help its host cellphone , reprogramming it to bemore effective at uptaking nutrients .
The virus in question is one that infects marine plankton , which are major biogeochemists of the ocean . The tiny organisms take up nutrient wash off into the oceans from the land and released by fish , mammal , and birds as they go about their business . They are also major carbon sinks , as when they die they sink to the bottom of the ocean , trapping the carbon in the depths .
The fact that a computer virus has been found to influence this process of nutrient intake in plankton could have significance as to how carbon is ingest and stored in our sea .
One of the biggest specify component to the increment of plankton is the availability of phosphorous and nitrogen . Therefore , it was a surprise to researchers from the University of Exeter when they found that when a plankton species known asOstreococcus taurigets infect with a specific computer virus , it in reality gets an additional ammonium transporter on its surface . This permit the green algae to more efficiently take up N .
This sound like it would be a dandy advantage to the plankton it infect , and it is – in the short term at least . The newly contribute protein gives the being an vantage over other clean plankton , which are outcompeted as theO. tauritake up more of the atomic number 7 . The increase in development of the infected plankton is also an advantage to the virus , which is able to apace manifold within it , until it then ask to spread .
“ This is good to the virus in term of its own breeding – and when the computer virus is ready , it kills the cell and releases more of the computer virus to taint others , ” says Professor Thomas Richards , who co - authored the research published in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , in astatement .
Not only that , but it seems that the virus has at some head stolen the musical composition of deoxyribonucleic acid that fool for the ammonium conveyor belt protein from a mintage of phytoplankton and repurposed it for its exercise on green algae .
unremarkably , when we think of bionomics , we consider hold factors such as nutrient availability or depredation . But this virus is seemingly blurring these line . This has implications for how we now look at these processes , specially within a marine setting , and could work marine nourishing cycles .
