The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has announced a three-year, $2.25 million grant to scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to study microbes and viruses beneath the ocean floor.

The grant will support a research program at MBL led by Josephine Bay Paul Center scientist Julie Huber to explore how viruses and microbes interact in the sub-seafloor rocks of the Axial Seamount, a deep-sea volcano in the Pacific Ocean. "The field of environmental viral ecology has come a long way in the past decade," said Huber. "But there have been very few studies in the deep sea."

Building on their previous study of microbial life in the Axial vent fluids, the team will examine how viruses are infecting the microbes to paint a more detailed picture of the microbial members of the sub-seafloor community. A major question the team seeks to answer is how sub-seafloor microbes alter the flow of carbon and nutrients in the deep ocean. The findings could have important implications, as some nations are looking at injecting carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel use into the ocean floor.

"Microbial communities dominate nearly every corner of our oceans," said Huber, "yet they remain vastly under-sampled and our understanding of them is severely limited."