Researchers have discovered that certain organisms eat viruses, which could open new doors for medical research.
Scientists have discovered something intriguing in a new type of organism that actually eats viruses. The organisms, which are known as virovores, don’t just eat viruses accidentally, either. These organisms actually go out of their way to support a diet that snacks on viruses.
The discovery of the organisms that eat viruses came when researcher John DeLong from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln set out to see if any microbes actively ate viruses. To do this, DeLong and his team collected samples of pond water and then isolated different microbes from the water. Then, they added chlorovirus, a freshwater virus that infects green algae.
From there, DeLong and his team watched as one particular microbe called Halteria began to snack on the virus. Further, in samples of the water that did not offer other food sources for Halteria, the microbe grew about 15 times within two days just by eating the chlorovirus. More intriguingly, samples that didn’t have the virus saw no growth in Halteria at all.To further test the hypothesis that the organism was eating the virus, the researchers added dye to the chlorovirus DNA.
Virovory essentially is exactly the same as herbivory and carnivory, thereby determining that these organisms eat viruses to survive and sustain themselves. Of course, Halteria is also unlikely to be the only virovore out there. As such, the researchers plan to continue experimenting and looking for other organisms that can eat viruses in the same way.
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