The Good, the Bad, and the Tiny: A Simple, Mechanistic-Probabilistic Model of Virus-Nutrient Colimitation in Microbes.

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

SUBMITTER: Cael BB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4657896 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature