UW News
Robert Morris
May 28, 2020
The most common organism in the oceans harbors a virus in its DNA
![grey oval with orange circles attached](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/05/28155226/20191008_PNP1_22K_07-150x150.png)
A new study in Nature Microbiology shows that the most common organism in the world’s oceans — and possibly the whole planet — harbors a virus in its DNA. This virus may have helped it survive and outcompete other organisms. The study began as a UW School of Oceanography senior thesis.
July 19, 2016
UW oceanographers grow, sequence genome of ocean microbe important to climate change
![Marine microbes were collected from a low-oxygen fjord in Barkley Sound, off the coast of British Columbia.](https://uw-s3-cdn.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2016/07/04151801/Barkeley_Sound-150x150.jpg)
A University of Washington team has shed new light on a common but poorly understood bacteria known to live in low-oxygen areas in the ocean. By culturing and sequencing the microbe’s entire genome, the oceanographers found that it significantly contributes to the removal of life-supporting nitrogen from the water in new and surprising ways.