University of Hawai’i at Mānoa oceanographers have identified PelV-1, a dinoflagellate-infecting giant virus whose micron-length tail reaches 2.3 µm, stretching current notions of viral architecture.
University of Hawai’i at Mānoa oceanographers have identified PelV-1, a dinoflagellate-infecting giant virus whose micron-length tail reaches 2.3 µm, stretching current notions of viral architecture.
Few phytoplankton-infecting viruses have been characterized, and dinoflagellate isolates remain scarce, leaving ocean-ecosystem models short of vital host-virus data. Prior surveys listed only two large DNA viruses infecting Heterocapsa species, neither accompanied by a genome sequence.
In the study, « A dinoflagellate-infecting giant virus with a micron-length tail », published on the bioRxiv pre-print server, researchers combined electron microscopy and high-coverage sequencing to characterize PelV-1 infection of Pelagodinium sp.
