Dipping into marine viral-host interactions by means of ViralTag and PhageFISH

8th Aquatic Virus Workshop, 10-16 July 2016, PlymouthThe Viral tagging technique is a promising method for detecting virus-host interactions both in culture and in natural samples. We have applied this technique to Pseudoalteromonas-Phage models getting successful results. We monitored the attachment process of different viral-host systems using flow cytometry. Our preliminary results suggest that there are two kinds of infections: the fast attaching viruses that infect bacteria in about 30 minutes, and the slow attaching viruses that infect bacteria in about 2 hours. After this period of time the percentage of labeled bacteria decreased suggesting that lysis occurs. Lysis was confirmed by spectrophotometry. We have observed that to get reliable outcomes with this technique it is important to control parameters as temperature, bacterial generation times, and dyes incubation time among others. The final objective is to use this technique for detecting the interaction between viruses and hosts in nature during annual cycles, allowing us to know how viral infections respond to biological, physical and chemical changesPeer Reviewe