Humanity loves good villains, and few are more threatening and sinister than the virus. They are virtually invisible, brutal parasites that take over our own living cells and twist their biological essence into more viral soldiers to continue their carnage.
However, viruses play a very important role in the ecosystem. They are like the apex predators of the savannah, lions who are reducing their numbers and keeping the gazelle population down.
This is the first time that a virus-only diet has been shown to be sufficient for the survival of microbes, which the researchers call “virovory,” meaning “viral feeding.”
For example, simple aquatic plants called algae can begin to multiply uncontrollably, causing algal blooms. Some flowers are poisonous, can suffocate beaches and lakes, can suffocate wildlife, and often swell so large that they can be seen from space. A variety of human activities can cause or exacerbate blooms, including nutrient pollution from sewage discharges.
Then comes the chlorovirus. Named after the Greek word for “green,” these are large species of viruses found in freshwater environments around the world. And they love to infect algae. Chloroviruses actually play an important role in controlling algal blooms.
Nevertheless, when the virus kills the algae cells, they pop like wet balloons, exhaling all the nutrients hidden inside into the water, where they are swallowed whole by other microbes. is called a “viral shunt”, meaning that other organisms further up the food chain cannot benefit from this nutrient cycle.
they found it Halteria spAs well as devouring the virus, the virus had enough nutritional value to reproduce and reproduce.
But new research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that chloroviruses are not only regularly eaten, they are also nutritious, broadening our thinking about food chains and carbon-earth cycles. This paper was co-authored by Professor of Plant Pathology James Van Etten, who first discovered chloroviruses in 1980.
To study this, researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln scooped up pond water containing a microbe called Halteria spThese tiny creatures are called ciliates because they are covered with tiny hair-like projections called cilia. Ciliates were then given a heaping portion of chlorovirus, and some cultures were given nothing as controls.
they found it Harteria sp. Beyond just devouring viruses, viruses had enough nutritional value to reproduce and reproduce. To prove that this is actually happening, they labeled the viral DNA with a green fluorescent dye. And when they examined the “stomach” (technically called the vacuole) of these microbes, they found a glowing virus inside. This is the first time that a virus-only diet has been shown to be sufficient for the survival of microbes, which the researchers call “virovory,” meaning “viral feeding.”
“Multiplying the number of viruses, the number of ciliates, and a rough estimate of the amount of water gives us this massive energy transfer (up the food chain),” said John DeLonge, lead author of the study. I’m here. An associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said in a statement: He and his colleagues estimate that a small pond ciliate he could eat 10 trillion viruses a day. “If this is happening on the scale we think it is, it should completely change the way we look at the global carbon cycle,” said DeLonge.
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In fact, this is the missing relationship in the food chain model. The authors argue that “current food web models lack important interactions,” but there is surprisingly little research in this area.
“I had the motive to decide if this was weird, or if it was appropriate,” DeLong said.
To learn more, DeLong would like to repeat this experiment outside the lab. The discovery of the first viral eaters really underscores how little we know about the microbes around us, not to mention their evolution. Genes change over time. Understanding this relationship not only has a profound impact on how nutrients cycle through ecosystems, but also reveals some of the fundamental mechanisms of life itself.
