Amazing stuff!
Do you hate when journalists use extreme exaggeration in their headline to make their article more attractive! Here is such a case!
Don't panic! Yes, there are many more viruses out there, but apparently they are either harmless, beneficial, or the human immune system can handle them! Otherwise, humans would be long extinct! 😊
"... These viruses were discovered in global data collected from soil samples, oceans, lakes, and other ecosystems – like sewage.
The researchers also used new computational tools to reconstruct how the viruses underwent evolutionary development in order to adapt to different hosts. ...
compared to DNA viruses, the diversity and roles of RNA viruses in microbial ecosystems are not well understood. ..."
compared to DNA viruses, the diversity and roles of RNA viruses in microbial ecosystems are not well understood. ..."
From the highlights and abstract:
"Highlights
• Metatranscriptome mining reveals a major expansion of RNA virus diversity
• A putative new phylum of RNA bacteriophages encodes distinct lysis proteins
• Partiti-like RNA phages are targeted by a bacterial CRISPR system
• Protein domains implicated in virus-host interactions are identified
Summary
High-throughput RNA sequencing offers broad opportunities to explore the Earth RNA virome. Mining 5,150 diverse metatranscriptomes uncovered >2.5 million RNA virus contigs. Analysis of >330,000 RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RdRPs) shows that this expansion corresponds to a 5-fold increase of the known RNA virus diversity. Gene content analysis revealed multiple protein domains previously not found in RNA viruses and implicated in virus-host interactions. Extended RdRP phylogeny supports the monophyly of the five established phyla and reveals two putative additional bacteriophage phyla and numerous putative additional classes and orders. The dramatically expanded phylum Lenarviricota, consisting of bacterial and related eukaryotic viruses, now accounts for a third of the RNA virome. Identification of CRISPR spacer matches and bacteriolytic proteins suggests that subsets of picobirnaviruses and partitiviruses, previously associated with eukaryotes, infect prokaryotic hosts."
Graphical abstract
No comments:
Post a Comment