BIOGEOCHEMICAL CYCLE OF ORGANIC MATTER IN COASTAL MARINE ENVIRONMENT: THE ROLE OF VIRUSES IN CONTROLLING BACTERIAL PROLIFERATION

The results obtained both by field studies and experimental approach confirmed the temporal stability of virioplankton abundance in marine system and highlighted the need of informations relatively to virioplankton balance between its production and decay rates. Since there is no standard method for the estimate of viral production, three different experimental protocols were set up in order to compare the accuracy of the obtained results and to establish the usefulness of a single technique. The first technique provides an estimate of virus production rates by radiotracer incorporation method that measures production of DNA-containing viral progeny over incubation period. Another method provides the rates of virus production of the bacteria infected prior to the beginning of the experiment, while the serial dilution technique designed originally for the estimate of grazing activity was adopted and modified to determine virus production in natural phage-host assemblage. This experimental framework, together with the experiment set up to evaluate virus-mediated mortality of different bacterial groups ( distinguished according to their metabolism), provided new findings relatively to viral impact on bacterioplankton and allowed the estimate of viral production in different environmental conditions. Molecular biology techniques, such as PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) e DGGE (Denaturant Gradient Gel Electrophoresis) were used to verify the influence of virus-mediated mortality on the bacterial community structure.