Weihong Liu , Qikun Hang

Tropical Microbial Resources Research Center, Cuixi Academy of Biotechnology, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2025, Vol. 15, No. 4   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2025.15.0019
Received: 11 Jul., 2025    Accepted: 16 Aug., 2025    Published: 27 Aug., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Liu W.H., and Hang Q.K., 2025, Symbiotic and antagonistic relationships between microalgae and environmental microorganisms, International Journal of Marine Science, 15(4): 209-219 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2025.15.0019)

There is a complex interaction between microalgae and environmental microorganisms, including two major categories: mutually beneficial symbiosis and hostile antagonism. This interaction not only affects the functions of aquatic ecosystems, but also has great significance for applications such as biomass energy production and sewage treatment. This study outlines the biological characteristics of microalgae and the diversity of environmental microbial communities, elaborates on the symbiotic mechanisms of nutrient complementarity, matter exchange, signaling, etc. of microalgae-microbial interaction, as well as hostile effects such as nutritional competition, allelosensitivity inhibition, viral parasitism and predation. Typical cases such as symbiosis between cyanobacteria and nitrogen-fixing bacteria, co-culture of microalgae-heterotrophic bacteria to improve biofuel yield, and disintegration of algae blooms by viruses, revealing the far-reaching impact of microalgae-microbial interaction on community diversity, water bloom succession and global carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycle. On this basis, we look forward to the future research directions in molecular mechanism analysis, multiomics technology application and ecological engineering regulation.

Microalgae; Environmental microorganisms; Symbiosis; Antagonism; Algae interaction