(A) General location and local geography of the Milne Fiord epishelf lake in 2015 (adapted from reference 7). Gray areas of map indicate lake ice detected by RADARSAT-2 imagery. (B) Cartoon showing accumulation of freshwater behind Milne Ice Shelf and the bottom topography of Neige Bay.
Readers may recall how I wrote very recently about a 'giant virus' that is designed to infect and kill an amoeba, but whatever designed it, also designed a bacterium to defend the amoeba from it, in a seemingly pointless excercise in design for no apparent reason. That's if you see everything in terms of the childish intelligent [sic] design hoax.
Now scientists have discovered another 'giant' virus' that lives in a remote arctic lake and does nothing other than kill the cyanobacteria that also live there, which, presumably, Creationists believe were designed by the same designer who designed the 'giant virus'.
If you can't see the flaw in the reasoning that this must have been designed by a intelligent designer, then it's highly likely that you have fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax yourself, or your definition of 'intelligent' is at odds with the way the rest of the English-speaking world uses it.
Just a quick reminder about these "giant viruses": These are a goup of very large viruses that are several times larger than normal visues such as the COVI-19-causing SARS-CoV-2. They have a relatively complex genome which includes genes normally only found in cellular animals, plants and fungi. They are harmlees to humans since they only infect single-celled organisms such as amoebae and, in this case, cyanobacteria. They are relatively common in a marine environment and can have an impact at the lowest level of the food chain by killing the organisms that recycle nutrients from dead organisms from higher up the food chain. How and why they got their complex genomes is the current subject of study, but may be the result of horizontal gene transfer during evolutionary arms races between them and their hosts.
The discovery was made by microbiologists from Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada. Their findings are published, open access in the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology. How the discovery was made and its significance in terms of climate change are explained in the ASM news release:
Less than 500 miles from the North Pole, the Milne Fiord Epishelf Lake is a unique freshwater lake that floats atop the Arctic Ocean, held in place only by a coating of ice. The lake is dominated by single-celled organisms, notably cyanobacteria, that are frequently infected by unusual "giant viruses."The concern of the research team is that they may be running out of time to investigate these "giant viruses" and the effect they may be having on a ecosystem but the concern for Creationists is to explain what on earth their favourite immaginary designer was playing at. First is designs special microorganisms to live in an Arctic epishelf lake, then designs a bizarre virus to kill them. Without resorting to an idiosycratic meaning of the word 'intelligent' how on earth can this be called 'intelligent design'?
[…]
Viruses are key to understanding polar aquatic ecosystems, as these ecosystems are dominated by single celled microorganisms, which are frequently infected by viruses. These viruses, and their diversity and distribution in the Milne Fiord Lake, have seldom been studied. The team is now working to sequence the giant viruses, an effort that will likely lead to understanding how the viruses influence the lake’s ecology via their interactions with the cyanobacteria they infect.
Quickly rising temperatures limit the time remaining for microbiologists to develop a clear picture of the biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles of these ice-dependent environments, as well as the consequences of the rapid, irreversible changes in temperature.The ice shelf that holds the lake in place is deteriorating every year, and when it breaks up, the lake will drain into the Arctic Ocean and be lost.
Our results highlight the uniqueness of the viral community in the freshwater lake, as compared to the marine fiord water, particularly in the halocline community.
Alexander I. Culley, corresponding author
Département de Biochimie, de Microbiologie et de Bio-Informatique
Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada
The halocline is an area where salinity falls quickly as one ascends the water column. According to Culley, this environment offers niches for viruses and hosts which are found neither in freshwater nor marine layers of uniform salinity.High bacterial abundance coupled with a possible prevalence of lytic lifestyle at this depth suggests that viruses have an important role in biomass turnover.
Mary Thaler, Ph.D., co-author
Département de Biochimie, de Microbiologie et de Bio-Informatique
Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada
The remote lake in the high arctic could only be reached by helicopter, when weather conditions allowed. The research team collected water samples and sequenced all the DNA in the lake water, allowing them to identify the viruses and microorganisms within it. The study establishes a basis for advancing understanding of viral ecology in diverse global environments, particularly in the high Arctic.
The most dramatic change observed in the Milne Fiord Epishelf Lake was a multiyear decline in the abundance of cyanobacteria. The researchers attributed that drop to the increasing marine influence in the freshwater lake, “since cyanobacteria have very low abundance in the Arctic Ocean,” they wrote.
Nonetheless, the details of this ecosystem remain obscure, because so far most of its viruses are known only from fragments of their sequences. Thus, in most cases, the scientists do not yet know how the viruses influence the microbes they infect, or which viruses inhabit which microbes.
Copyright: © 2022 The authors.Published by American Society for Microbiology. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
AbstractSo, would a creationists like to have a go at explaining what the intelligently designed purpose for these viruses is, or does that question need to be waved aside as an unaswerable mystery, like so much else in a childish superstition that tries to pose as grown-up science but fails at the first hurdle by not being able to answer simple questions?
Milne Fiord, located on the coastal margin of the Last Ice Area (LIA) in the High Arctic (82°N, Canada), harbors an epishelf lake, a rare type of ice-dependent ecosystem in which a layer of freshwater overlies marine water connected to the open ocean. This microbe-dominated ecosystem faces catastrophic change due to the deterioration of its ice environment related to warming temperatures. We produced the first assessment of viral abundance, diversity, and distribution in this vulnerable ecosystem and explored the niches available for viral taxa and the functional genes underlying their distribution. We found that the viral community in the freshwater layer was distinct from, and more diverse than, the community in the underlying seawater and contained a different set of putative auxiliary metabolic genes, including the sulfur starvation-linked gene tauD and the gene coding for patatin-like phospholipase. The halocline community resembled the freshwater more than the marine community, but harbored viral taxa unique to this layer. We observed distinct viral assemblages immediately below the halocline, at a depth that was associated with a peak of prasinophyte algae and the viral family Phycodnaviridae. We also assembled 15 complete circular genomes, including a putative Pelagibacter phage with a marine distribution. It appears that despite its isolated and precarious situation, the varied niches in this epishelf lake support a diverse viral community, highlighting the importance of characterizing underexplored microbiota in the Last Ice Area before these ecosystems undergo irreversible change.
Importance Viruses are key to understanding polar aquatic ecosystems, which are dominated by microorganisms. However, studies of viral communities are challenging to interpret because the vast majority of viruses are known only from sequence fragments, and their taxonomy, hosts, and genetic repertoires are unknown. Our study establishes a basis for comparison that will advance understanding of viral ecology in diverse global environments, particularly in the High Arctic. Rising temperatures in this region mean that researchers have limited time remaining to understand the biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles of ice-dependent environments and the consequences of these rapid, irreversible changes. The case of the Milne Fiord epishelf lake has special urgency because of the rarity of this type of “floating lake” ecosystem and its location in the Last Ice Area, a region of thick sea ice with global importance for conservation efforts.
Labbé MyriamA; Thaler MaryA; Pitot Thomas M.A; Rapp Josephine Z.A; Vincent Warwick F.A; Culley Alexander I.
Climate-Endangered Arctic Epishelf Lake Harbors Viral Assemblages with Distinct Genetic Repertoires
Applied and Environmental Microbiology (2022); e00228-22 DOI: 10.1128/aem.00228-22
Published by American Society for Microbiology. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
(A) General location and local geography of the Milne Fiord epishelf lake in 2015 (adapted from reference 7). Gray areas of map indicate lake ice detected by RADARSAT-2 imagery. (B) Cartoon showing accumulation of freshwater behind Milne Ice Shelf and the bottom topography of Neige Bay.
Readers may recall how I wrote very recently about a 'giant virus' that is designed to infect and kill an amoeba, but whatever designed it, also designed a bacterium to defend the amoeba from it, in a seemingly pointless exercise in design for no apparent reason. That's if you see everything in terms of the childish intelligent [sic] design hoax.
Now scientists have discovered another 'giant' virus' that lives in a remote arctic lake and does nothing other than kill the cyanobacteria that also live there, which, presumably, Creationists believe were designed by the same designer who designed the 'giant virus'.
If you can't see the flaw in the reasoning that this must have been designed by a intelligent designer, then it's highly likely that you have fallen for the intelligent [sic] design hoax yourself, or your definition of 'intelligent' is at odds with the way the rest of the English-speaking world uses it.
Just a quick reminder about these "giant viruses": These are a group of very large viruses that are several times larger than normal viruses such as the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2. Unlike normal viruses, they have a large and relatively complex genome which includes genes normally only found in cellular animals, plants and fungi. They are harmless to humans since they only infect single-celled organisms such as amoebae and, as in this case, cyanobacteria.
They are relatively common in a marine environment and can have an impact at the lowest level of the food chain by killing the organisms that recycle nutrients from dead organisms from higher up the food chain. How and why they got their complex genomes is the current subject of study, but may be the result of horizontal gene transfer during evolutionary arms races between them and their hosts.
The discovery was made by microbiologists from Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada. Their findings are published, open access in the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology. How the discovery was made and its significance in terms of climate change are explained in the ASM news release:
The concern of the research team is that they may be running out of time to investigate these "giant viruses" and the effect they may be having on a ecosystem but the concern for Creationists is to explain what on earth their favourite imaginary designer was playing at. First is designs special microorganisms to live in an Arctic epishelf lake, then designs a bizarre virus to kill them. Without resorting to an idiosyncratic meaning of the word 'intelligent', how on earth can this be called 'intelligent design'?Less than 500 miles from the North Pole, the Milne Fiord Epishelf Lake is a unique freshwater lake that floats atop the Arctic Ocean, held in place only by a coating of ice. The lake is dominated by single-celled organisms, notably cyanobacteria, that are frequently infected by unusual "giant viruses." Giant Viruses in Climate-Endangered Arctic Epishelf Lake
[…]
Viruses are key to understanding polar aquatic ecosystems, as these ecosystems are dominated by single celled microorganisms, which are frequently infected by viruses. These viruses, and their diversity and distribution in the Milne Fiord Lake, have seldom been studied. The team is now working to sequence the giant viruses, an effort that will likely lead to understanding how the viruses influence the lake’s ecology via their interactions with the cyanobacteria they infect.
Quickly rising temperatures limit the time remaining for microbiologists to develop a clear picture of the biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles of these ice-dependent environments, as well as the consequences of the rapid, irreversible changes in temperature.The ice shelf that holds the lake in place is deteriorating every year, and when it breaks up, the lake will drain into the Arctic Ocean and be lost.
Our results highlight the uniqueness of the viral community in the freshwater lake, as compared to the marine fiord water, particularly in the halocline community.
Alexander I. Culley, corresponding author
Département de Biochimie, de Microbiologie et de Bio-Informatique
Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada
The halocline is an area where salinity falls quickly as one ascends the water column. According to Culley, this environment offers niches for viruses and hosts which are found neither in freshwater nor marine layers of uniform salinity.High bacterial abundance coupled with a possible prevalence of lytic lifestyle at this depth suggests that viruses have an important role in biomass turnover.
Mary Thaler, Ph.D., co-author
Département de Biochimie, de Microbiologie et de Bio-Informatique
Université Laval, Québec, Québec, Canada
The remote lake in the high arctic could only be reached by helicopter, when weather conditions allowed. The research team collected water samples and sequenced all the DNA in the lake water, allowing them to identify the viruses and microorganisms within it. The study establishes a basis for advancing understanding of viral ecology in diverse global environments, particularly in the high Arctic.
The most dramatic change observed in the Milne Fiord Epishelf Lake was a multiyear decline in the abundance of cyanobacteria. The researchers attributed that drop to the increasing marine influence in the freshwater lake, “since cyanobacteria have very low abundance in the Arctic Ocean,” they wrote.
Nonetheless, the details of this ecosystem remain obscure, because so far most of its viruses are known only from fragments of their sequences. Thus, in most cases, the scientists do not yet know how the viruses influence the microbes they infect, or which viruses inhabit which microbes.
Copyright: © 2022 The authors.Published by American Society for Microbiology. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)
AbstractSo, would creationists like to have a go at explaining what the intelligently designed purpose for these viruses is, or does that question need to be waved aside as an unanswerable mystery, like so much else in a childish superstition that tries to pose as grown-up science but falls at the first hurdle by not being able to answer simple questions?
Milne Fiord, located on the coastal margin of the Last Ice Area (LIA) in the High Arctic (82°N, Canada), harbors an epishelf lake, a rare type of ice-dependent ecosystem in which a layer of freshwater overlies marine water connected to the open ocean. This microbe-dominated ecosystem faces catastrophic change due to the deterioration of its ice environment related to warming temperatures. We produced the first assessment of viral abundance, diversity, and distribution in this vulnerable ecosystem and explored the niches available for viral taxa and the functional genes underlying their distribution. We found that the viral community in the freshwater layer was distinct from, and more diverse than, the community in the underlying seawater and contained a different set of putative auxiliary metabolic genes, including the sulfur starvation-linked gene tauD and the gene coding for patatin-like phospholipase. The halocline community resembled the freshwater more than the marine community, but harbored viral taxa unique to this layer. We observed distinct viral assemblages immediately below the halocline, at a depth that was associated with a peak of prasinophyte algae and the viral family Phycodnaviridae. We also assembled 15 complete circular genomes, including a putative Pelagibacter phage with a marine distribution. It appears that despite its isolated and precarious situation, the varied niches in this epishelf lake support a diverse viral community, highlighting the importance of characterizing underexplored microbiota in the Last Ice Area before these ecosystems undergo irreversible change.
Importance Viruses are key to understanding polar aquatic ecosystems, which are dominated by microorganisms. However, studies of viral communities are challenging to interpret because the vast majority of viruses are known only from sequence fragments, and their taxonomy, hosts, and genetic repertoires are unknown. Our study establishes a basis for comparison that will advance understanding of viral ecology in diverse global environments, particularly in the High Arctic. Rising temperatures in this region mean that researchers have limited time remaining to understand the biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles of ice-dependent environments and the consequences of these rapid, irreversible changes. The case of the Milne Fiord epishelf lake has special urgency because of the rarity of this type of “floating lake” ecosystem and its location in the Last Ice Area, a region of thick sea ice with global importance for conservation efforts.
Labbé MyriamA; Thaler MaryA; Pitot Thomas M.A; Rapp Josephine Z.A; Vincent Warwick F.A; Culley Alexander I.
Climate-Endangered Arctic Epishelf Lake Harbors Viral Assemblages with Distinct Genetic Repertoires
Applied and Environmental Microbiology (2022); e00228-22 DOI: 10.1128/aem.00228-22
Published by American Society for Microbiology. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
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