Bacterial Viruses in the Sea 



359 



salt action." Phages survived heating in balanced salt solutions 

 as well as they did in broth. This work has, by-and-large, been 

 confirmed by Adams ( 1 ) and Amos ( 3 ) although Adams found, 

 in contradistinction to Burnet and McKie (5), that an increase 

 in the cation concenti^ation of the suspending medium resulted in 

 an increase in the thermal stabihty of one phage, T5. In view of 

 the comparatively high salt content of the habitat of marine 

 phages, the influence of the cationic composition of the suspend- 

 ing medium on the thennal inactivation of P/14 at 40 C when 

 suspended in sea water, distilled water, and in various NaCl con- 

 centrations was investigated with the results shown in Figure 2. 

 It can be seen that inactivation in sea water was very slight, and 



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o 

 u 



u 



o 



< 



Q. 

 O 



o 



9 lO 



TIME OF EXPOSURE -MINUTES 



Fig. 2. The thermal inactivation at 40 C of phage P/14 suspended in various 



inorganic media ( 1 ) . 



