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Microbial oceanography

Viral strategies at sea

Nature volume 531, pages 454–455 (2016)Cite this article

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The finding that marine environments with high levels of host microbes have fewer viruses per host than when host abundance is low challenges a theory on the relative roles of lysogenic and lytic viral-survival strategies. See Article p.466

Lysogeny is the process by which viral DNA is incorporated into the genome of the host organism, and it has long been thought that this ensures virus survival through periods of low host abundance. In this issue, Knowles et al.1 (page 466) use viral and bacterial host-abundance and genomic data to suggest the opposite: that lysogeny is associated with high host abundances. The authors call this a 'piggyback-the-winner' strategy, as opposed to the conventional view, which they paraphrase as 'piggyback-the-loser'.

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Figure 1: Marine microbes and their viruses.

Gunnar Bratbak

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. T. Frede Thingstad and Gunnar Bratbak are in the Department of Biology, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway.,

    T. Frede Thingstad & Gunnar Bratbak

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  1. T. Frede Thingstad
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  2. Gunnar Bratbak
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Correspondence to T. Frede Thingstad.

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Thingstad, T., Bratbak, G. Viral strategies at sea. Nature 531, 454–455 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17303

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