New bioinformatics research article focuses on global efforts to stress the importance of viruses in soil

Richard Allen White III, an assistant professor of bioinformatics in the College of Computing and Informatics, in collaboration with a group of scholars internationally, argue the scientific community’s understanding of the causes and impacts of global climate change could be deepened by paying more attention to how viruses affect soil.

White and a group of collaborators spanning 20 different international research organizations published the thought-provoking article “Integrating viruses into soil food web biogeochemistry” in the journal Nature Microbiology.

“There’s a viral link to soil processes that’s historically been neglected,” White explained. “When climate scientists create models for climate change, they typically focus on measuring carbon dioxide above ground, but in terms of everything below ground, including viruses, we’re just not measuring those processes as well.”

Over the course of two years, White and his colleagues integrated numerous studies toward the goal of successfully making the case that viruses play an important yet underexamined part in soil health and fertility, a role that if better investigated could provide new perspectives on the causes and measurable effects of global climate change. 

Read more on the CCI website at https://cci.charlotte.edu/2024/10/14/cci-bioinformatics-soil-virus-research/.

Photo: Sampling soil from ecosystems like Green Lakes State Park in New York could help scientists understand climate change.