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

沃特伯里9315895这位研究人员之前的研究已经证实，存在一组能够感染聚球藻的海洋蓝藻噬菌体，它们可以在每毫升104个噬菌体颗粒的极高滴度下出现。此外，沃特伯里还证明了自然细菌种群及其噬菌体遵循对大肠杆菌及其毒力噬菌体进行建模和恒化器研究所预测的模式。因此，沃特伯里假设，由于获得了抗药性，强毒聚球菌噬菌体在确定天然聚球菌群的克隆组成方面发挥了重要作用，但它们对总体种群密度或死亡率影响不大。为了验证这一假设，设计了一个实验室项目，开发核糖核酸和抗体探针，分别跟踪聚球菌及其噬菌体的物种动态。这个宿主-寄生虫系统将被证明是研究噬菌体在海洋中的作用的一个很好的模型。***

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. ***