How hidden viruses wake up inside seaweed and pass on to future generations

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology Tübingen have shown that giant viruses long thought to exist only as fleeting, free-living particles that can embed themselves permanently in the genome of a multicellular host, lie dormant for generations and then wake up on demand. Their study, published in Nature Microbiology, challenges fundamental assumptions about how giant viruses operate and establishes a powerful new model for studying viral latency in complex organisms.