Thursday, July 01, 2021

Beyond coronavirus: the virus discoveries transforming biology

Recommendable! Amazing stuff! Nice overview article by Nature journal! It is more than embarrassing that we still know so little about viruses!

Thus, the risk of viruses as biological weapons is very real! Just imagine, someone, somewhere develops a highly infectious and very deadly virus and its antidote at the same time ...

"Although we humans have been focused on one particularly nasty virus since early 2020, there are legions of other viruses out there waiting to be discovered. Scientists estimate that there are about 1031 individual viral particles inhabiting the oceans alone at any given time — 10 billion times the estimated number of stars in the known Universe.
It’s becoming clear that ecosystems and organisms rely on viruses. Tiny but mighty, they have fueled evolution for millions of years by shuttling genes between hosts. ...
There are just 9,110 named species listed by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), but that’s obviously a pitiful fraction of the total. In part, that’s because officially classifying a virus used to require scientists to culture a virus in its host or host cells — a time-consuming if not impossible process. ...
In 2020 alone, the ICTV added 1,044 species to its official list, and thousands more await description and naming. This proliferation of genomes prompted virologists to rethink the way they classify viruses and helped to clarify their evolution. There is strong evidence that viruses emerged multiple times, rather than sprouting from a single origin. ..."

Beyond coronavirus: the virus discoveries transforming biology SARS-CoV-2 is just one of nonillions of viruses on our planet, and scientists are rapidly identifying legions of new species.

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