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01-03-2016 | Rapid Communication

Giant viruses of the Kutch Desert

Authors: Csaba Kerepesi, Vince Grolmusz

Published in: Archives of Virology | Issue 3/2016

Abstract

The Kutch Desert (Great Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India) is a unique ecosystem: in the larger part of the year it is a hot, salty desert that is flooded regularly in the Indian monsoon season. In the dry season, the crystallized salt deposits form the “white desert” in large regions. The first metagenomic analysis of the soil samples of Kutch was published in 2013, and the data were deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive. At the same time, the sequences were analyzed phylogenetically for prokaryotes, especially for bacteria. In the present work, we identified DNA sequences of recently discovered giant viruses in the soil samples from the Kutch Desert. Since most giant viruses have been discovered in biofilms in industrial cooling towers, ocean water, and freshwater ponds, we were surprised to find their DNA sequences in soil samples from a seasonally very hot and arid, salty environment.

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Title: Giant viruses of the Kutch Desert
Authors: Csaba Kerepesi
Vince Grolmusz
Publication date: 01-03-2016
Publisher: Springer Vienna
Published in: Archives of Virology / Issue 3/2016
Print ISSN: 0304-8608
Electronic ISSN: 1432-8798
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00705-015-2720-8

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