Eukaryotic virus composition can predict the efficiency of carbon export in the global ocean

Hiroto Kaneko; Romain Blanc-Mathieu; Hisashi Endo; Samuel Chaffron; Tom O Delmont; Morgan Gaia; Nicolas Henry; Rodrigo Hernández-Velázquez; Canh Hao Nguyen; Hiroshi Mamitsuka; Patrick Forterre; Olivier Jaillon; Colomban de Vargas; Matthew B Sullivan; Curtis A Suttle; Lionel Guidi; Hiroyuki Ogata

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.102002

Eukaryotic virus composition can predict the efficiency of carbon export in the global ocean

iScience. 2020 Dec 29;24(1):102002. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.102002. eCollection 2021 Jan 22.

Authors

Hiroto Kaneko¹, Romain Blanc-Mathieu^{1

2}, Hisashi Endo¹, Samuel Chaffron^{3

4}, Tom O Delmont^{4

5}, Morgan Gaia^{4

5}, Nicolas Henry⁶, Rodrigo Hernández-Velázquez¹, Canh Hao Nguyen¹, Hiroshi Mamitsuka¹, Patrick Forterre⁷, Olivier Jaillon^{4

5}, Colomban de Vargas⁶, Matthew B Sullivan⁸, Curtis A Suttle⁹, Lionel Guidi¹⁰, Hiroyuki Ogata¹

Affiliations

¹ Bioinformatics Center, Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University, Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan.
² Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire & Végétale, CEA, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, INRA, IRIG, Grenoble, France.
³ Université de Nantes, CNRS UMR 6004, LS2N, 44000 Nantes, France.
⁴ Research Federation (FR2022) Tara Oceans GO-SEE, Paris, France.
⁵ Génomique Métabolique, Genoscope, Institut François Jacob, CEA, CNRS, 91000 Evry, France.
⁶ Sorbonne Universités, CNRS, Laboratoire Adaptation et Diversité en Milieu Marin, Station Biologique de Roscoff, 29680 Roscoff, France.
⁷ Institut Pasteur, Department of Microbiology, 25 rue du Docteur Roux, 75015, Paris, France.
⁸ Department of Microbiology and Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States of America.
⁹ Departments of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences, Microbiology & Immunology, and Botany, and the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada.
¹⁰ Sorbonne Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d'Océanographie de Villefanche, LOV, 06230 Villefranche-sur-mer, France.

Abstract

The biological carbon pump, in which carbon fixed by photosynthesis is exported to the deep ocean through sinking, is a major process in Earth's carbon cycle. The proportion of primary production that is exported is termed the carbon export efficiency (CEE). Based on in-lab or regional scale observations, viruses were previously suggested to affect the CEE (i.e., viral "shunt" and "shuttle"). In this study, we tested associations between viral community composition and CEE measured at a global scale. A regression model based on relative abundance of viral marker genes explained 67% of the variation in CEE. Viruses with high importance in the model were predicted to infect ecologically important hosts. These results are consistent with the view that the viral shunt and shuttle functions at a large scale and further imply that viruses likely act in this process in a way dependent on their hosts and ecosystem dynamics.

Keywords: Biogeoscience; Carbon Cycle; Global Carbon Cycle; Oceanography; Viral Microbiology; Virology.