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Project Acronym: PHYCOVIRTopics: Microorganisms, Algae Culture, Maritime Environment, Sanitary ControlDisciplinary Fields: Marine Biology, VirologySummary: Photosynthetic microorganisms in the ocean form the basis of the marine food chain and are responsible for more than half of primary production on Earth. The diversity of microalgae inhabiting phytoplankton, their abundance and dynamics are partly regulated by viruses. Viruses play a major role in global biogeochemical cycles. These viruses also represent a potential threat to industrial microalgal culture systems that reach critical densities favourable to the outbreak of epidemics. Cases of mass mortality (i.e., crash) of cultured microalgae have been documented on some American pilot sites, causing up to 30% losses in annual harvests ((Congress of the International Society of Applied Phycology, Nantes 2017)). However, the causes of these crashes are rarely exploited.PHYCOVIR is a project to explore viral biodiversity and assess the impact of viruses in an intensive microalgae culture system implemented for biofuel production and recycling of industrial smoke. Three lines of work are proposed: 1) Metagenomic analysis of the virome of the culture basin to study viral diversity. 2) Isolation of virus strains from the culture basin for laboratory characterization 3) Analysis of algal/virus population dynamics by quantitative PCR to characterize the reciprocal influence of these two compartments.Project Interlocutor: Guillaume Blanc (MIO, UMR 7294)Project Duration: 04/29/2019 - 04/28/2021Call of Proposal: Pépinière d'Excellence 2018Photography Credits: Photo by Adrien Converse on Unsplash