Viral Diversity, Viral De Novo Assembly, and Viral Half-Life in Groundwater (A06)

• Subject Area: Virology ; Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology ; Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology
• Term: since 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 218627073

Groundwater serves as drinking water. Drinking water should be nonpathogenic, but each year we are faced with outbreaks originating from viruses in groundwater or surface water. We aim to show (i) groundwater harbors one or two orders of magnitude more viruses than currently detected; (ii) a correlation between the bacterial and viral community and their nucleic acid modification signature; (iii) that viruses are infective without the host for more than two months; (iv) direct virus–host interaction; and to (v) develop a high-throughput pipeline for multiple bacteria simultaneously.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1076: AquaDiva: Understanding the Links between Surface and Subsurface Biogeosphere
• Applicant Institution: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Manja Marz