The Good, the Bad, and the Tiny: A Simple, Mechanistic-Probabilistic Model of Virus-Nutrient Colimitation in Microbes
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Cael-2015-The Good, the Bad, a.pdf
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1.01 MB
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Author(s)
Barry, Brendan C.
Date Issued
November 2015
Journal
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Citation
Cael, B. B. “The Good, the Bad, and the Tiny: A Simple, Mechanistic-Probabilistic Model of Virus-Nutrient Colimitation in Microbes.” Edited by Muhammad Aqeel Ashraf. PLoS ONE 10, no. 11 (November 23, 2015): e0143299.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
For phytoplankton and other microbes, nutrient receptors are often the passages through which viruses invade. This presents a bottom-up vs. top-down, co-limitation scenario; how do these would-be-hosts balance minimizing viral susceptibility with maximizing uptake of limiting nutrient(s)? This question has been addressed in the biological literature on evolutionary timescales for populations, but a shorter timescale, mechanistic perspective is lacking, and marine viral literature suggests the strong influence of additional factors, e.g. host size; while the literature on both nutrient uptake and host-virus interactions is expansive, their intersection, of ubiquitous relevance to marine environments, is understudied. I present a simple, mechanistic model from first principles to analyze the effect of this co-limitation scenario on individual growth, which suggests that in environments with high risk of viral invasion or spatial/temporal heterogeneity, an individual host’s growth rate may be optimized with respect to receptor coverage, producing top-down selective pressure on short timescales. The model has general applicability, is suggestive of hypotheses for empirical exploration, and can be extended to theoretical studies of more complex behaviors and systems.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143299
