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Instead of studying cells in a lab dish, the scientists used advanced computer modeling to analyze how molecular networks inside ciliate and mammalian cells respond to different patterns of stimulation.

“To the best of our knowledge, ciliates have never been observed in association with urchin diseases elsewhere,” Hewson and his colleagues wrote in a Science Advances paper published last year.

The probable culprit is a disease-causing ciliate parasite that brings with it a fast death - perhaps the same one that has wreaked havoc on sea urchin populations in the Caribbean.

But they did spot traces of tiny single-celled organisms called ciliates, which only showed up in the sick urchins.

A research team placed Halteria ciliates—a type of protozoan with hairlike organelles found in freshwater worldwide—in a petri dish with only chloroviruses, which infect green algae.