Scientists have completed the first comprehensive survey of the microscopic life living in the open waters of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. They have uncovered hundreds of bacterial species which were not know previously and hundreds of thousands of viruses.

The Great Barrier Reef Microbial Genomes Database compiles prokaryotic, viral and eukaryotic genomes from seawater collected from the Great Barrier Reef, providing a rich resource…

Research identifies 808,585 viral genomes belonging to what scientists estimate to be 362,802 different viruses