And the American scientist and researcher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, John DeLong, tried to find out whether these microbes were deliberately and diligently feeding on viruses.
The academic wanted to know whether such a diet could advance physiological growth in individuals, in a way that had an effect on population growth.
The researcher said that viruses consist of many elements, such as nucleic acids, and a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus, and therefore, they are really tempting to turn into a meal for other microscopic organisms that exist in nature.
In an effort to conduct an experiment, the researcher DeLong, in the framework of group work with his team, took a water sample from a lake, and then came up with different microbes.
Next, the researchers added large amounts of virus DNA, a component normally found in freshwater that infects algae.
During the following days, the researchers kept track of the evolution of the number of viruses and other microbes, to see if one was eating the other.
The results showed that exactly one of the microbes actually eats viruses, and its scientific name is “Helateria”, so that its number increased 15 times in just two days.
As for the viruses that were placed in the experiment, their number decreased by a hundred times, which shows that they were already exposed to predation.
This study constitutes a major progress towards understanding environmental diversity and the nature of living organisms. Details of this research were published in the Journal of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States.
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