The deep-ocean accounts for the majority of the water on our planet. While the cold deep-ocean is the dominant nutrient-challenged ecosystem, hydrothermal vents represent oases along tectonically active areas of the seafloor. Hydrothermal vents and the surrounding cold deep-ocean each support unique communities of microbes and viruses that have become highly adapted to local conditions. Through cycles of infection and host cell lysis, bacteriophages (viruses that specifically infect...

As a deep subsurface biosphere is thought to be the biggest biosphere in the earth, it is very interesting to know the phylogenetic and functional diversity in such environments. However, there is a little biological information for them because it is very hard to recover whole microbial community by only culture-base methods. In that sense, metagenomics is one of major useful methods to elucidate the microbial flora in unknown biosphere, which seems to be constructed by mainly unculturable...

A documentary on tectonics, continental drift, and ocean floor exploration.