Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Viruses: Five Lessons Learned about Large Viruses Infecting Small Eukaryotes and the Opportunities They Create

Isolation and Characterization of a Double Stranded DNA Megavirus Infecting the Toxin-Producing Haptophyte Prymnesium parvum

“…This somewhat less restricted host range is similar to that found for Haptolina ericina virus (HeV RF02), Prymnesium kappa virus (PkV RF01) and Prymnesium kappa virus (PkV RF02) [42]. Taken together, this suggested that PpDNAV was a member of the algal Megavirus family [43]. …”

Viral ecology comes of age

“…For double‐stranded DNA phage of microbes at least, genomics is already being embraced as the foundation for viral taxonomy (Simmonds et al ., ) and elucidating viral populations in natural samples (Brum and Sullivan, ), as well as connecting viruses and hosts at community scales (Edwards et al ., ; Roux et al ., ). The picture is far less simple for giant dsDNA viruses (Wilhelm et al ., ), as well as ssDNA and RNA viruses, and our Crystal Ball remains cloudy here. Where possible, however, such lineage‐specific virus–host measurements will (i) help elucidate mechanisms driving total virus‐to‐microbe‐ratios, (ii) present microbial ecologists the opportunity to study viruses specific to focal microbes and (iii) inspire collaborations between theorists and empiricists that will guide experiments towards sampling schemes that will better inform ecosystem models.…”

A Student’s Guide to Giant Viruses Infecting Small Eukaryotes: From Acanthamoeba to Zooxanthellae

“…Globally, it has been proposed that there are more than 350,000 algal species [104]. Given the possibility that all algae may be infected with one or more viruses [105,106], the possibility of a collection of unknown giants remains very real, and indeed molecular data point to at least a broad diversity within the known groups [107,108]. Building on the above, it is clear from a survey of the literature that researchers identified candidate protist-giant virus systems well before Mimivirus was documented (Table 3).…”