China University of Science and Cymcobacteria found the natural enemy of the chaohu water cyanobacteria

Reporters from the Chinese University of Science and Technology learned that the university's National Research Center for Microscale Material Science and the School of Life Sciences Professor Zhou Congzhao and Professor Chen Yuxing team, through long-term efforts, the study found that the nest lake water blue algae natural enemy - algal carcass assembly mechanism. The findings were published online online in the journal Structure.
algae is one of the oldest living things on Earth and can be photochemically used to participate in regulating the carbon-nitrogen cycle of the biosphere. However, in nutrient-rich water bodies, the overbreeding of cyanobacteria leads to water blooms, which cause serious economic and social problems. Serious water pollution occurs every year in Chaohu, China's fifth-largest freshwater lake, and there is still no effective way to control the outbreak of cyanobacteria blooms in Chaohu.
is a specific infection of cyanobacteria virus, can regulate the population density and seasonal distribution of cyanobacteria, is considered a potentially effective biological intervention in cyanobacteria bloom. So far, however, research on freshwater algae has been virtually blank.
In order to study the ecological distribution, infestion mechanism and co-evolutionary relationship with cyanobacteria, the researchers isolated a brand-new long-tailed algae Mic1 from the nest lake, which was able to specificly infect the dominant algae species microcystic algae in chaohu water. Mic1 has a head size of about 88 nanometers and a tail size of about 400 nanometers. Using cryoelectrome technology, the researchers analyzed the near-atomic resolution structure of Mic1's head, the first three-dimensional structure of freshwater algae, which clearly illustrates Mic1's head assembly mechanism. Structural analysis found that Mic1's head was assembled by the shell protein gp40 and decorative protein gp47 to form a twenty-sided structure. The gp40 takes the classic phage HK97-like folding mode, forming a pentagonal and hexagogic body, which is further assembled to form a twenty-faced head through a palate structure. Decorative protein gp47 adopts a new folding mode, anchored near the secondary axis of the twenty-sided body, further strengthening the stability of the head.
the study explains the assembly mechanism of algal carb, provides theoretical guidance for subsequent algal modification and artificial synthesis, and is applied to the intervention of cyanobacteria bloom.