How many more virus phyla could there be waiting to be discovered? 🦠
in their natural ecosystems, RNA viruses have been relatively unstudied.
Unlike humans and other organisms composed of cells, however, viruses lack unique short stretches of DNA that could act as what researchers call a . Without this bar code, trying to distinguish different species of virus in the wild can be challenging.that allows a virus to replicate its genetic material. It is the only protein that all RNA viruses share because it plays an essential role in how they propagate themselves. Each RNA virus, however, has small differences in the gene that codes for the protein that can help distinguish one type of virus from another.
global research project. Planktons are any aquatic organisms that are too small to swim against the current. They’re a vital part of ocean food webs and are common hosts for RNA viruses. Our screening ultimately identified over 44,000 genes that code for the virus protein.Our next challenge, then, was to determine the evolutionary connections between these genes. The more similar the two genes were, the more likely viruses with those genes were closely related.
We identified a total of 5,504 new marine RNA viruses and doubled the number of known RNA virus phyla from five to 10. Mapping these new sequences geographically revealed that two of the new phyla were particularly abundant across vast oceanic regions, with regional preferences in either temperate and tropical waters or the Arctic Ocean (the