Infection of phytoplankton by aerosolized marine viruses

Abstract

Marine viruses constitute a major ecological and evolutionary driving force in the marine ecosystems. However, their dispersal mechanisms remain underexplored. Here we follow the dynamics of Emiliania huxleyi viruses (EhV) that infect the ubiquitous, bloom-forming phytoplankton E. huxleyi and show that EhV are emitted to the atmosphere as primary marine aerosols. Using a laboratory-based setup, we showed that the dynamic of EhV aerial emission is strongly coupled to the host-virus dynamic in the culture media. In addition, we recovered EhV DNA from atmospheric samples collected over an E. huxleyi bloom in the North Atlantic, providing evidence for aerosolization of marine viruses in their natural environment. Decay rate analysis in the laboratory revealed that aerosolized viruses can remain infective under meteorological conditions prevailing during E. huxleyi blooms in the ocean, allowing potential dispersal and infectivity over hundreds of kilometers. Based on the combined laboratory and in situ findings, we propose that atmospheric transport of EhV is an effective transmission mechanism for spreading viral infection over large areas in the ocean. This transmission mechanism may also have an important ecological impact on the large-scale host-virus "arms race" during bloom succession and consequently the turnover of carbon in the ocean.

The Impact of Atmospheric Dry Deposition Associated Microbes on the Southeastern Mediterranean Sea Surface Water following an Intense Dust Storm

“…It is possible that some chemical components derived from aerosols are toxic to specific groups of organisms (Paytan et al, 2009) or have negative biologically impacts via viral lysis (Vardi et al, 2012;Sharoni et al, 2015), allelopathy, or other mechanisms that may be at play. It is also possible that airborne microbes will synergistically interact with ambient populations.…”

Viral serine palmitoyltransferase induces metabolic switch in sphingolipid biosynthesis and is required for infection of a marine alga

“…The EhV-specific vGSL has a ceramide core consisting of a trihydroxy LCB (t17:0) and C22-C24 hydroxylated fatty acids. Thus, the enrichment of GSLs with a multihydroxylated ceramide backbone in the EhV membranes may confer a structural requirement to maintain the integrity of the viral particles and may affect their decay rate under UV stress in the upper ocean and atmosphere (54). Furthermore, these bioactive lipids can regulate other cellular processes, such as induction of PCD, which has been shown to be structurally and stereochemically specific (55)(56)(57)(58).…”

Bridging the Gap between Knowing and Modeling Viruses in Marine Systems—An Upcoming Frontier

“…An objective implication of these relationships is that viruses can only be modeled against their specific hosts, meaning that both viruses and hosts needs to be explicitly modeled. Eventually, this implies that the whole modeling effort must start with field measurements for specific host-virus interactions (e.g., Sorensen et al, 2009;Martínez et al, 2012;Sharoni et al, 2015).…”