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Want to learn about viruses before the live session next week? The talks are pre-recorded & available now, so what are you waiting for? Let's highlight the invited talk by @virome_girl entitled "Deciphering the “Dissolved”: Ecological Roles of Aquatic Viruses" without spoilers! https://twitter.com/jgi/status/1337464923740393475
It starts off with amazing graphics (from https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-marine-120709-142805?journalCode=marine) to give background on how viruses are important. Then Mya explains how the Lab is interested in if viruses affect an ecosystem when they are not infecting a host? 
She explains how viruses can disproportionately tie up phosphorus, nitrogen, & iron - Iron phage makes a debut! Then we go into an ISOTOPE EXPERIMENT
!!! where (57)Fe is used to track what amount of Fe ends up in the dissolved fraction and in which category.
!!! where (57)Fe is used to track what amount of Fe ends up in the dissolved fraction and in which category.
The hypothesis: "A significant amount of dissolved Fe could be complexed within phage"
No spoilers but we think viruses are critical for availability of iron in the oceans & Mya gives an example of how this work is applicable to other environments. Personally, I am interested in how viruses affect Fe and P availability in tropical soils.
Anoxic events can enhance plant & microbial P utilization as it lowers Fe-P sorption strength described in https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecy.2928. Oxic/anoxic events are frequent in these soils & in my previous talk () I explained that we see different viruses in each.
I am still figuring out what it all means, but as Mya said there is much more to this Ferrojan Horse Hypothesis. I highly recommend watching Mya's @theAGU talk ASAP & join the live session on Wednesday with your Qs ready.
