A chemical arms race….

A review of: Kay D Bidle and Assaf Vardi. (2011). A chemical arms race at sea mediates algal host-virus interactions. Current Opinion in Microbiology. 14, 449-457.

As we delve deeper into the study of marine microbiology we are becoming increasingly aware the importance of viruses and their interactions on microbial populations in the oceans and the ocean processes. Some of you have already posted on viruses and how they shape the microbial communities which in turn affects productivity, either helping or hindering.

This paper is a literature review as opposed to an experimental report. The focus of this review is the recent work in algal host-virus systems and the elegant strategies of viral infection. In this paper the authors refer to metagenomic approaches and the important role these play in understanding the diversity, lateral gene transfer (LGT) and metabolic rewiring. LGT is important for viruses because this “mechanism allows the virus to manipulate and ‘rewire’ host metabolic pathways for their replication”. The authors use an example of the Coccolithoviruses and how they infect an annual algal bloom of Emiliania huxleyi (E.huxleyi) which is the most abundant coccolithophore globally. This example explains how the coccolithovirus uses a co-evolutionary biochemical ‘arms race’ to manipulate metabolic pathways and regulates cell fate via programmed cell death (PCD). Virally encoded-glycosphingolipids (vGSLs) seem to be another focus within the review. It states that vGSLs critically control the host-viral interactions in E.huxleyi and this lipid based host virus plays a major role in regulating viral infections of natural populations.

Two further topics within the review talk about functional conservation and diversity of viruses where they explain about biochemical, molecular and physiological markers and how these show a mechanistic link between PCD and viral infection using an example of the newly discovered picornaviruses which infect both diatoms and dinoflagellates. The other talking about mechanisms of resistance and how the evidence gathered can actually bring new thinking into the mechanisms of resistance to viral infection.

This review talks about some very interesting areas of science which we are only uncovering now but it does relate the importance of virus-host interactions and how metagenomic approaches can help understand viruses further. It also has some very interesting figures which do help to understand some of the concepts the authors are trying to portray. As this is a literature review In the last paragraph the authors talk about using the subcellular approaches reviewed to give insight to viral infection over different spatial scales including the effects of climate change looking at prior and post, so look out for a paper in the next couple of years by these authors as they might be able to tells us more…?