Biosensor it affects marine organisms, especially plankton (floating microorganisms) and viruses that attack plankton. Plankton form the base of the marine food chains and are believed to affect our planet's temperature and weather by uptake of CO for photosynthesis. Deneb Karentz, a researcher at the Laboratory of Radio-biology and Environmental Health (University of California, San Francisco) has devised a simple method for measuring ultraviolet penetration and intensity. Working in the Antarctic Ocean, she submerged to various depths thin plastic bags containing special strains of "E. coli" that are almost totally unable to repair ultraviolet radiation damage to their DNA. Bacterial death
Marine life of millions of viruses and tens of millions of bacteria are deposited daily on every square meter around the planet. Microscopic organisms live in every part of the biosphere. The mass of prokaryote microorganisms — which includes bacteria and archaea, but not the nucleated eukaryote microorganisms — may be as much as 0.8 trillion tons of carbon (of the total biosphere mass, estimated at between 1 and 4 trillion tons). Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than a depth of in the Mariana Trench, the deepest spot in the Earth's oceans. In fact, single-celled life forms have been