ArticlePLoS pathogens2017
Morphological switch to a resistant subpopulation in response to viral infection in the bloom-forming coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi.
Article in PLoS pathogens, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
- Diving into the hidden viral world of marine protists.Journal of virology · 2026Review
- Genomic analysis ofVirus evolution · 2026Article
- Mapping the transcriptional landscape of algal resistance to viral infection reveals a core expression program.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- Bacteria induce an amoeboid phase in coccolithophores that persists after bloom collapse.Science advances · 2025Article
- A comparison of calcification mechanisms in haploid and diploid cells of the coccolithophore Calcidiscus leptoporus (Murray & Blackman 1898).Journal of phycology · 2025Article
- Life cycle and morphogenetic differentiation in heteromorphic cell types of a cosmopolitan marine microalga.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- Uncertain fate of pelagic calcifying protists: a cellular perspective on a changing ocean.The ISME journal · 2025Review
- CASCADE: Dataset of extant coccolithophore size, carbon content and global distribution.Scientific data · 2024Article
- Phagocytosis in Marine CoccolithophoreBiology · 2024Article
- The consequences of viral infection on protists.Communications biology · 2024Review
- Cell-to-cell heterogeneity drives host-virus coexistence in a bloom-forming alga.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- Daily turnover of active giant virus infection during algal blooms revealed by single-cell transcriptomics.Science advances · 2023Article
- Different photosynthetic responses of haploid and diploid Emiliania huxleyi (Prymnesiophyceae) to high light and ultraviolet radiation.Bioresources and bioprocessing · 2023Article
- Lipid biomarkers for algal resistance to viral infection in the ocean.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- An Emiliania huxleyi pan-transcriptome reveals basal strain specificity in gene expression patterns.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Virus-induced spore formation as a defense mechanism in marine diatoms.The New phytologist · 2021Article
- Phytosterol Profiles, Genomes and Enzymes - An Overview.Frontiers in plant science · 2021Review
- Unmasking cellular response of a bloom-forming alga to viral infection by resolving expression profiles at a single-cell level.PLoS pathogens · 2019Article
- In plaque-mass spectrometry imaging of a bloom-forming alga during viral infection reveals a metabolic shift towards odd-chain fatty acid lipids.Nature microbiology · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Recognizing the life cycle of an organism is key to understanding its biology and ecological impact. Emiliania huxleyi is a cosmopolitan marine microalga, which displays a poorly understood biphasic sexual life cycle comprised of a calcified diploid phase and a morphologically distinct biflagellate haploid phase. Diploid cells (2N) form large-scale blooms in the oceans, which are routinely terminated by specific lytic viruses (EhV). In contrast, haploid cells (1N) are resistant to EhV. Further evidence indicates that 1N cells may be produced during viral infection. A shift in morphology, driven by meiosis, could therefore constitute a mechanism for E. huxleyi cells to escape from EhV during blooms. This process has been metaphorically coined the 'Cheshire Cat' (CC) strategy. We tested this model in two E. huxleyi strains using a detailed assessment of morphological and ploidy-level variations as well as expression of gene markers for meiosis and the flagellate phenotype. We showed that following the CC model, production of resistant cells was triggered during infection. This led to the rise of a new subpopulation of cells in the two strains that morphologically resembled haploid cells and were resistant to EhV. However, ploidy-level analyses indicated that the new resistant cells were diploid or aneuploid. Thus, the CC strategy in E. huxleyi appears to be a life-phase switch mechanism involving morphological remodeling that is decoupled from meiosis. Our results highlight the adaptive significance of morphological plasticity mediating complex host-virus interactions in marine phytoplankton.
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Registered trials
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