Week 9: Viruses that can help ‘dial up’ carbon capture in the sea

“Oceans soak up carbon, and that buffers us against climate change. CO2 is absorbed as a gas, and its conversion into organic carbon is dictated by microbes,”  Matthew Sullivan, professor of microbiology and director of the Center of Microbiome Science at The Ohio State University, says. “What we’re seeing now is that viruses target the most important reactions in these microbial community metabolisms. This means we can start investigating which viruses could be used to convert carbon toward the kind we want.