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Iron-Virus Interactions: Development And Testing Of The Ferrojan Horse Hypothesis, Chelsea Bonnain

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Iron is an essential micronutrient for phytoplankton metabolism that limits growth in many regions of the surface ocean. More than 99.9% of oceanic dissolved iron is organically complexed to an iron-binding ligand, many of which have yet to be characterized. This thesis puts forth the Ferrojan Horse Hypothesis, which predicts a role for marine phages in oceanic iron cycling. Based on evidence from non-marine model systems, the Ferrojan Horse Hypothesis suggests that some marine phages (short for bacteriophages, or viruses that infect bacteria) can use iron as a “Trojan Horse” to gain access to host siderophore-bound iron receptors for infection. …