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Viruses modulate carbon cycling, but it's been unknown whether they're active under winter conditions. Gareth Trubl (Lawrence Livermore National Lab) and colleagues published a new paper on active virus-host interactions at sub-freezing temperatures in Arctic peat soil. They used stable isotope probing targeted metagenomics to study Arctic soils under simulated winter conditions, and detected substantial active virus-host interactions. This highlights viruses as major community-structuring agents that likely modulate carbon loss in peat soils during winter. (Plus, it highlights how their technique illuminated interactions that would have been missed with standard metagenomics).

Be sure to check out the 2-min video on this paper!