“Seeing and Organizing the Marine Virosphere to Advance Viral Ecology” will be presented by Matthew Sullivan from the University of Arizona at 4 p.m. April 22 in Beadle Center, Room E103. The seminar is free and open to the public.

Microbes drive the global biogeochemistry that fuels our planet and viruses impact these microbes through mortality, horizontal gene transfer and directly modulating core microbial metabolisms. Here, Sullivan will highlight recent methodological advances in viral metagenomics that make the field “quantitative” and discuss a simple yet powerful new method called viral tagging, which links wild viruses “en masse” to a cultured host of interest for population genomic sequencing, as well as application of time series microbial-viral metagenomics to the eastern North Pacific Ocean oxygen minimum zone.

The results from wild populations impact the understanding of viral taxonomy and define, quantify and characterize a ‘population,’ as well as develop new hypotheses about how viruses directly manipulate globally-important microbial metabolisms beyond photosynthesis.

The complete schedule of seminars can be found at http://biotech.unl.edu/.