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Bacteriophages are among the most common and diverse entities in the biosphere. [2] Bacteriophages are ubiquitous viruses, found wherever bacteria exist. It is estimated there are more than 10 31 bacteriophages on the planet, more than every other organism on Earth, including bacteria, combined. [3]
Bacteriophages , potentially the most numerous "organisms" on Earth, are the viruses of bacteria (more generally, of prokaryotes [1]). Phage ecology is the study of the interaction of bacteriophages with their environments. [2]
Bacteriophages are harmless to plants and animals but are essential to the regulation of marine ecosystems. They supply key mechanisms for recycling ocean carbon and nutrients . In a process known as the viral shunt , organic molecules released from dead bacterial cells stimulate fresh bacterial and algal growth.
Transmission electron micrograph of multiple bacteriophages attached to a bacterial cell wall. A phageome is a community of bacteriophages and their metagenomes localized in a particular environment, similar to a microbiome. [1] [2] Phageome is a subcategory of virome, which is all of the viruses that are associated with a host or environment. [3]
Bacteria are ubiquitous, living in every possible habitat on the planet including soil, underwater, deep in Earth's crust and even such extreme environments as acidic hot springs and radioactive waste. [25] [26] There are thought to be approximately 2×10 30 bacteria on Earth, [27] forming a biomass that is only exceeded by plants. [28]
In a 1945 study by Demerec and Fano, [4] T7 was used to describe one of the seven phage types (T1 to T7) that grow lytically on Escherichia coli. [5] Although all seven phages were numbered arbitrarily, phages with odd numbers, or T-odd phages, were later discovered to share morphological and biochemical features that distinguish them from T-even phages. [6]
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The combined domains of archaea and bacteria make up the most diverse and abundant group of organisms on Earth and inhabit practically all environments where the temperature is below +140 °C (284 °F). They are found in water, soil, air, as the microbiome of an organism, hot springs and even deep beneath the Earth's crust in rocks. [48]