Lipid peroxides provide the coordinated bust of an algae bloom

Blooms of harmful algae often collapse within a few days, but what drives their rapid and widespread disappearance? Yinjie Zhu and colleagues have now traced a potential pathway for this coordinated cell death that depends on the formation of lipid peroxides. Their findings could point toward new solutions for controlling algae blooms that threaten drinking water and disrupt ecosystem functions. In their investigations of a Microcystis algae bloom and bust in a freshwater lake, Zhu et al. found that iron-catalyzed peroxidation of algal lipids destabilizes and kills the cells, while also releasing active lipid peroxides that kill off neighboring cells. In this way, lipid peroxidation serves as the trigger for the rapid collapse of an algae bloom. In a related Perspective, Rainer Kurmayer discusses how features such as environmental availability of iron and Microcystis adaptation, among other factors, might be considered in future studies of the phenomenon.