Cyanophages of Marine Synechococcus: A Model System to Evaluate the Impact of Viruses on the Population Structure and Dynamics of Planktonic Bacteria

该研究人员先前的研究已经证实，存在一种能够感染聚球菌的多种海洋蓝藻噬菌体，并且它们可以以每毫升104个噬菌体颗粒的极高滴度发生。此外，沃特伯里已经表明，自然细菌种群及其噬菌体遵循从大肠杆菌及其毒性噬菌体的建模和趋化研究中预测的模式。因此，Waterbury假设，由于获得耐药性，强毒的聚珠球菌噬菌体在决定天然聚珠球菌群体的克隆组成方面起着重要作用，但它们对总体种群密度或死亡率的影响很小。为了验证这一假设，我们设计了一个实验室项目，分别开发核糖核酸和抗体探针，以跟踪聚球菌及其噬菌体的物种动态。这种宿主-寄生虫系统将被证明是检验噬菌体在海洋中的作用的一个极好的模型。＊＊＊

Waterbury 9315895 Previous studies by this investigator have confirmed that the presence of a diverse group of marine cyanobacterial phages that are capable of infecting Synechococcus and that they can occur at extremely high titers of 104 phage particles per milliliter. In addition, Waterbury has shown that a natural bacterial population and its phages follow the patterns predicted from modeling and chemostat studies of E. coli and its virulent phages. Thus, Waterbury hypothesizes that due to the acquisition of resistance, virulent Synechococcus phages play an important role in determining the clonal composition of natural Synechococcus populations, but that they have little effect on the overall population densities or mortality. To test this hypothesis, a laboratory project is designed to develop ribonucleic acid and antibody probes to follow the species dynamics of Synechococcus and its phages, respectively. This host-parasite system will prove to be an excellent model to examine the role of bacteriophages in the oceans. ***