ArticleThe ISME journal2021
A single-cell polony method reveals low levels of infected Prochlorococcus in oligotrophic waters despite high cyanophage abundances.
Article in The ISME journal, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers.
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41 citing papers in PubMed, 104 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Inferring single-cell heterogeneity of bacteriophage lysis-associated life-history traits from population-scale dynamics.Science advances · 2026Article
- Article
- Hi-C Links Reveal Viral Activity and Infection Within the Free-Living Microbial Community of a Secondary Chlorophyll Maximum in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Coexistence of Photosynthetic Marine Microorganisms, Viruses and Grazers: Towards Integration in Ocean Ecosystem Models.Environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Sub-daily virus sampling at the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series reveals diel and depth-structured population dynamics without community-level shifts.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Mapping of the viral shunt across widespread coccolithophore blooms using metabolic biomarkers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Systematic scale-up and enhanced purification of marine cyanophage P-SSP7.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Illuminating the newly produced viruses within the virosphere with bioorthogonal noncanonical amino acid tagging and single-virus genomic sequencing technologies.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Seasonal enhancement of the viral shunt catalyzes a subsurface oxygen maximum in the Sargasso Sea.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A single-cell perspective on host-virus dynamics in the ocean.Trends in microbiology · 2025Review
- Diel partitioning in microbial phosphorus acquisition in the Sargasso Sea.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Review
- Targeted genomic analysis of a predominant uncultured marine pelagiphage-host model via microfluidics and semipermeable capsule technology.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Contrasting defense strategies of oligotrophs and copiotrophs revealed by single-cell-resolved virus-host pairing of freshwater bacteria.ISME communications · 2025Article
- Adaptive loss of tRNA gene expression leads to phage resistance in a marine Synechococcus cyanobacterium.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Cold Surface Waters of the Sub-Antarctic Pacific Ocean Support High Cyanophage Abundances and Infection Levels.Environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Metabolites from intact phage-infected Synechococcus chemotactically attract heterotrophic marine bacteria.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Single-cell RNA-seq of the rare virosphere reveals the native hosts of giant viruses in the marine environment.Nature microbiology · 2024Article
- Viral Infection Leads to a Unique Suite of Allelopathic Chemical Signals in Three Diatom Host-Virus Pairs.Marine drugs · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Long-term stability of picocyanobacteria in the open oceans is maintained by a balance between synchronous division and death on daily timescales. Viruses are considered a major source of microbial mortality, however, current methods to measure infection have significant methodological limitations. Here we describe a method that pairs flow-cytometric sorting with a PCR-based polony technique to simultaneously screen thousands of taxonomically resolved individual cells for intracellular virus DNA, enabling sensitive, high-throughput, and direct quantification of infection by different virus lineages. Under controlled conditions with picocyanobacteria-cyanophage models, the method detected infection throughout the lytic cycle and discriminated between varying infection levels. In North Pacific subtropical surface waters, the method revealed that only a small percentage of Prochlorococcus (0.35-1.6%) were infected, predominantly by T4-like cyanophages, and that infection oscillated 2-fold in phase with the diel cycle. This corresponds to 0.35-4.8% of Prochlorococcus mortality daily. Cyanophages were 2-4-fold more abundant than Prochlorococcus, indicating that most encounters did not result in infection and suggesting infection is mitigated via host resistance, reduced phage infectivity and inefficient adsorption. This method will enable quantification of infection for key microbial taxa across oceanic regimes and will help determine the extent that viruses shape microbial communities and ecosystem level processes.
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