Abstract
Viruses were earlier found to be 10-fold more abundant than prokaryotes in deep granitic groundwater at the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory (HRL). Using a most probable number (MPN) method, 8–30 000 cells of sulphate-reducing bacteria per ml were found in groundwater from seven boreholes at the Äspö HRL. The content of lytic phages infecting the indigenous bacterium Desulfovibrio aespoeensis in Äspö groundwater was analysed using the MPN technique for phages. In four of 10 boreholes, 0.2−80 phages per ml were found at depths of 342–450 m. Isolates of lytic phages were made from five cultures. Using transmission electron microscopy, these were characterized and found to be in the Podoviridae morphology group. The isolated phages were further analysed regarding host range and were found not to infect five other species of Desulfovibrio or 10 Desulfovibrio isolates with up to 99.9% 16S rRNA gene sequence identity to D. aespoeensis. To further analyse phage–host interactions, using a direct count method, growth of the phages and their host was followed in batch cultures, and the viral burst size was calculated to be ∼170 phages per lytic event, after a latent period of ∼70 h. When surviving cells from infected D. aespoeensis batch cultures were inoculated into new cultures and reinfected, immunity to the phages was found. The parasite–prey system found implies that viruses are important for microbial ecosystem diversity and activity, and for microbial numbers in deep subsurface groundwater.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Johanna Arlinger, Lisa Karlsson and Sara Eriksson at Microbial Analytics Sweden AB for assistance with laboratory cultivations and with sampling at the Äspö HRL, and Jennifer Kyle, Grant Ferris, Mikal Heldal and Gunnar Bratbak for assistance with TEM. We are also grateful for funding from the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co. and the Swedish Research Council.
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Eydal, H., Jägevall, S., Hermansson, M. et al. Bacteriophage lytic to Desulfovibrio aespoeensis isolated from deep groundwater. ISME J 3, 1139–1147 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2009.66
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ismej.2009.66
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