By Graziella L. Posted Apr 10, 2022 3:31pm
An international team of scientists has managed to identify more than 5000 new marine viruses in the oceans, an important discovery for science to understand ocean ecosystems.
Contrary to what one might think, the important discovery of 5500 new viruses in which oceans is not bad news. Indeed this one marine viruses could help scientists to better understand ecosystems of the oceansto understand their role in theCarbon storage by the oceans and thus to understand climate change and its consequences differently.
It was an international team of scientists who identified these new virus species, which are part of previously unknown branches. The study, published a few days ago in the journal Science, is based on the analysis of 35,000 water samples taken from the seas around the world. The main goal is to understand the Role of RNA Viruses in marine ecosystems. So they discovered that 5500 species had RNA genetic material and had to create other levels of classification to account for them.
These researchers estimate that almost one Billions of unknown viruses are present in the oceans. While we now know that their role in human life is particularly important, scientists don’t know much about their actual work. But it would definitely be viruses controller ecosystems. For example, when an organism becomes too abundant, viruses attack it to prevent it from dominating. They could therefore infect microorganisms, flora and fauna, but not humans.