Posted on 03/29/2011 3:23:02 PM PDT by neverdem
First of the parasitic parasites to be discovered in a natural environment points to hidden diversity.
A genomic survey of the microbial life in an Antarctic lake has revealed a new virophage — a virus that attacks viruses. The discovery suggests that these life forms are more common, and have a larger role in the environment, than was once thought.
An Australian research team found the virophage while surveying the extremely salty Organic Lake in eastern Antarctica. While sequencing the collective genome of microbes living in the surface waters, they discovered the virus, which they dubbed the Organic Lake Virophage (OLV).
The OLV genome was identified nestling within the sequences of phycodnaviruses — a group of giant viruses that attack algae. Evidence of gene exchange, and possible co-evolution, between the two suggests that OLV preys on the phycodnavirus. Although OLV is the dominant virophage in the lake, the work suggests others might be present.
By killing phycodnaviruses, the OLV might allow algae to thrive. Ricardo Cavicchioli, a microbiologist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues found that mathematical models of the Organic Lake system that took account of the virophage's toll on its host showed lower algal mortality and more blooms during the lake's two ice-free summer months.
"Our work reveals not only an amazing diversity in microbial life in this lake, but also how little we understand about the complexity of the biological functions at work," says Cavicchioli. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science1...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
When dyslexia attacks.
Jonathan SWIFT.
The Thing. Que Kurt Russell.
You don't have to go all the way to Antarctica to find parasitic parasites - check out DC.
““parasitic parasites”? Who wrote this twaddle?”
You beat me.
Thanks Redneck,
I appreciate your informatve post. I suspect that most of the rest of the posters are JR HS students.
“If we find a virus that attacks other viruses,
that may open the door to treating a lot of
diseases...”
Only if the FDA never has to approve it.
not bad ... but don’t give up your day job ...
I'd say a good deal of DC bloodsuckers know they are destroying the country to line their own pockets.
Maybe the virophage is able to use the Zooplankton to reproduce. I'm no virologist or microbiologist, but this is certainly new.
If cancer is a virus as some suggest...
So it is a virus that piggybacks onto a megavirus that piggybacks onto a Zooplankton that reproduces ALL three actors in our little drama of reproduction.
Then you got your Kuncinch parasitizing Obama..
-OR- your Micheal Moore's parasitizing any restaurant..
AND democrats parasitizing Washington D.C....
AND Rinos parasitizing them...
Theres a whole lot of freeloading going on..
“What else do you call a parasite that goes after parasites?”
Lobbyist?
Eastern Europe has spent decades developing bacteriophages as an alternative to western medicine antibiotics.
“There’s something back there, I don’t know what it is, but it’s weird and pissed off.”
-——a new virophage — a virus that attacks viruses. ——
If I were a dualist, a believer in the ying and the yang, good and evil , black and white, then I would think “but of course”
For an evil virus, there has to be a good antivirus. That is just the way things are.
"A government employee at the welfare office would fit the bill."
This site needs a "like button" feature.
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