A team of Russian scientists with the participation of specialists from the Lomonosov Moscow State University discovered the DNA of three bacteriophage viruses at a depth of two kilometers underground in the Tomsk region. This was announced on Wednesday by the press service of Moscow State University.
“A team of Russian biologists with the participation of specialists from the Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov discovered DNA of bacteriophage viruses of the order Caudovirales in water extracted from a depth of two kilometers. Such studies allow us to understand bit by bit who inhabits the bowels of the earth and how underground ecosystems function,”the message says.
A huge biomass is concentrated in the bowels of the earth, which is made up of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. Viral particles were also previously found in the "underground biosphere", but their diversity has been poorly studied.
Russian biologists from the Federal Research Center "Biotechnology" of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lomonosov Moscow State University and Tomsk State University carried out a metagenomic analysis of a water sample extracted from an aquifer at a depth of 2 km. The well was drilled in the village of Chazhemto (Tomsk Region) in the mid-1950s to search for oil. However, instead of fuel, thermal waters were discovered, which scientists studied.
Three circular DNAs were found in the water, which belong to bacteriophage viruses of the order Caudovirales. These sequences have now been entered and made available to researchers around the world in the GenBank database. In the future, scientists plan to investigate the spread of viruses in other underground aquifers of the West Siberian region, and also to establish what types of bacteria they can infect.
"These studies will make it possible to establish the ecological role of viruses in underground ecosystems, their effect on the biogeochemical processes occurring in them and the evolution of the underground biosphere, isolated from the Earth's surface for tens to hundreds of millions of years," biotechnology Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University Vitaly Kadnikov.