[LO-Feature]March 2000 L&O Featured Article now available

[lo-feature-admin@aslo.org]

The featured article in the March issue of L&O is:

"The complete genomic sequence of the marine phage Roseophage SIO1 shares 
homology with nonmarine phages" by Rohwer, Forest, Anca Segall, Grieg 
Steward, Victor Seguritan, Mya Breitbart, Felise Wolven, and Farooq Azam. 
It will appear in L&O 45(2): 408-418.

This article is freely available at the Web address:

          http://aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_45/issue_2/0408.pdf

Instructions for reading PDF files are located on the ASLO web page:

          http://aslo.org/help/loonline.html

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Introductory comments by Paul Falkowski (L&O Associate Editor)

The discovery that viruses are abundant in aquatic ecosystems in the mid 
1970's (e.g. Pienaar 1976; Mayer and Tayor 1997) quickly led to 
quantitative analyses and numerous hypotheses of their ecological 
significance (Borsheim et al. 1990; Fuhrman 1999). Up to now, progress in 
understanding their potential roles in lysis of protists, lateral gene 
transfer, and as infective agents in metazoans and macroflora has been 
hampered by a lack of understanding of their genetic composition and 
variability. Forest Rohwer and colleagues' featured L&O paper "The complete 
genomic sequence of the marine phage Roseophage SIO1 shares homology with
nonmarine phages" is the first paper reporting a full DNA sequence of a 
marine virus. Its fundamental scientific import is that it opens the door 
to directly addressing many important and fascinating questions about 
relationships between viruses and their potential role in food web dynamics 
in aquatic ecosystems.

Modern molecular biological techniques allow DNA sequence information to be 
obtained much more easily than 20 years ago, when the first complete 
sequence for a virus was reported (Sanger et al.1977). DNA sequence data 
provide clues about the potential docking site for the virus, its mode of 
replication, and its potential for lysis. Together with existing sequence 
information from other viruses, and sequences yet to be reported, such data 
should allow us to finally understand how aquatic viruses evolved and their 
potential as vectors for gene transfer between organisms. This intersection 
between microbial ecology and molecular biology is critical for developing 
and testing hypotheses about energy and material transfers in aquatic 
ecosystems.

We hope that this featured L&O article will be of broad interest, and 
further, that it may inspire others to consider the aforementioned 
disciplinary intersection as a fertile ground for new directions in aquatic 
science.

References:

Borsheim Y., Bratbak G., and Heldal H. (1990) Enumeration and biomass 
estimation of planktonic bacteria and viruses by transmission electron 
microscopy. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 56: 352-366.

Fuhrman, Jed A. (1999) Marine viruses and their biogeochemical and 
ecological effects. Nature 399: 541 - 548.

Mayer J.A, and Taylor F.J.R. (1979) A virus which lyses the marine 
nonflaggelate Micromonas pusilla. Nature (London) 281: 299-301.

Pienaar R.N. (1976) Virus-like particles in three species of phytoplankton 
from San Juan Island, Washington. Phycologia 15: 185-190.

Sanger F., Air G.M., Barrell BG., Brown N.L., Coulson A.R., Fiddes C.A., 
Hutchison C.A., Slocombe P.M., and Smith M. (1977) Nucliotide sequence of 
bacteriophage phi X174 DNA. Nature 265: 687-695.