Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 7610010, Israel.
Sci Adv. 2023 Oct 13;9(41):eadf7971. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adf7971. Epub 2023 Oct 12.
Giant viruses infect many unicellular eukaryotes, including algae that form massive oceanic blooms. Despite the major impact of viruses on the marine ecosystem, the ability to quantify and assess active viral infection in nature remains a major challenge. We applied single-cell RNA sequencing, to profile virus and host transcriptomes of 12,000 single algal cells from a coccolithophore bloom. Viral infection was detected already at early exponential bloom phase, negatively correlating with the bloom intensity. A consistent percent of infected coccolithophores displayed the early phase of viral replication for several consecutive days, indicating a daily turnover and continuous virocell-associated metabolite production, potentially affecting the surrounding microbiome. Linking single-cell infection state to host physiology revealed that infected cells remained calcified even in the late infection stage. These findings stress the importance of studying host-virus dynamics in natural populations, at single-cell resolution, to better understand virus life cycle and its impact on microbial food webs.
巨型病毒感染许多单细胞真核生物，包括形成大规模海洋浮游生物的藻类。尽管病毒对海洋生态系统有重大影响，但在自然界中定量和评估活跃病毒感染的能力仍然是一个主要挑战。我们应用单细胞 RNA 测序，对来自一颗有孔虫藻浮游生物爆发的 12000 个单细胞的病毒和宿主转录组进行了分析。在早期指数生长爆发阶段就检测到了病毒感染，与爆发强度呈负相关。一致比例的受感染的颗石藻显示出病毒复制的早期阶段持续了数天，表明每天都有更替和持续的病毒细胞相关代谢产物的产生，这可能会影响周围的微生物组。将单细胞感染状态与宿主生理学联系起来表明，即使在晚期感染阶段，受感染的细胞仍然会钙化。这些发现强调了在单细胞分辨率下研究自然种群中的宿主-病毒动态的重要性，以更好地了解病毒生命周期及其对微生物食物网的影响。
