Emiliania huxleyi is the most prominent modern coccolithophore,a group of photosynthetic marine unicellular eukaryotes that play a critical role in ocean biogeochemistry.Coccolithoviruses are large double stranded DNA viruses,which is responsible for the demise of large oceanic blooms formed E.huxleyi.The virus acquired a series of enzyme-coding genes predicted to be involved in the sphingolipid biosynthesis by gene transfers between virus-host.