Pre-existing genome architecture partitions viral takeover in the smallest free-living eukaryote

Pre-existing nuclear genome architecture in Ostreococcus tauri partitions lytic takeover by prasinovirus OtV5, with viral DNA depleted from accessible low-GC outlier cores and contacting telomeric flanks beyond prior boundaries.

• Why it matters: It was unclear whether established spatial genome boundaries constrain viral progression, especially because sequence composition and transcriptional output are coupled in animal systems.
• What they did: The study tracked productive lytic infection of Ostreococcus tauri by OtV5, measuring transcription, chromatin accessibility, and 3D contacts across parallel time courses, including a host transcript pool collapse 18-fold by 10 h post-infection.
• The result: Host shutdown, insulation decay, early chromatin opening, and viral DNA positioning were bounded by pre-infection architectural coordinates; in two low-GC outlier domains, accessibility and relative upregulation rose by 6 hpi, while viral DNA preferentially avoided these cores.

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