title: Rewiring Host Lipid Metabolism by Large Viruses Determines the Fate of Emiliania huxleyi, a Bloom-Forming Alga in the Ocean.
abstract: Marine viruses are major ecological and evolutionary drivers of microbial food webs regulating the fate of carbon in the ocean. We combined transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses to explore the cellular pathways mediating the interaction between the bloom-forming coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi and its specific coccolithoviruses (E. huxleyi virus [EhV]). We show that EhV induces profound transcriptome remodeling targeted toward fatty acid synthesis to support viral assembly. A metabolic shift toward production of viral-derived sphingolipids was detected during infection and coincided with downregulation of host de novo sphingolipid genes and induction of the viral-encoded homologous pathway. The depletion of host-specific sterols during lytic infection and their detection in purified virions revealed their novel role in viral life cycle. We identify an essential function of the mevalonate-isoprenoid branch of sterol biosynthesis during infection and propose its downregulation as an antiviral mechanism. We demonstrate how viral replication depends on the hijacking of host lipid metabolism during the chemical "arms race" in the ocean.
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Shilo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rosenwasser
authors.affiliation: Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry/Bioorganic Analytics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, Hans Knöll Institute, 07745 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Michaela A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Mausz
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Daniella
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schatz
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Uri
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Sheyn
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Sergey
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Malitsky
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Asaph
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Aharoni
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Eyal
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Weinstock
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Oren
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Tzfadia
authors.affiliation: Bioinformatics and Biological Computing Unit, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Shifra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ben-Dor
authors.affiliation: The Nancy and Stephen Grand Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Ester
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Feldmesser
authors.affiliation: Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry/Bioorganic Analytics, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, 07743 Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Georg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pohnert
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel assaf.vardi@weizmann.ac.il.
authors.forename: Assaf
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vardi