Scientists in Blacksburg have discovered a large, previously unseen virus inside algae. The virus poses no risk to human health but the discovery reveals just how adaptive viruses can be, said Frank Aylward, associate professor in the department of biological sciences at Virginia Tech and one of the researchers on the study.
“There are lots of viruses out there in the biosphere. If you go out in the duck pond right now, you would find trillions and trillions of viruses in just a small volume of water,” Aylward said. “Viruses are by far more abundant by far than any other life form on the planet.”
He and PhD student, Paula Erazo, the lead researcher on the study, suspected they might be able to find a virus inside a green algae called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a species that has been heavily studied for over 70 years.
They bought a 30-year-old lab sample of the algae and began looking at it with genome sequencing technology.
“And this particular strain had been in culture for 30 years,” Aylward explained.
They discovered a virus that had been there, inside the algae, undetected for decades.
“We could definitely see that there was a virus inserted there,” Erazo said. “Which is something we couldn’t see before because the technology wasn’t as advanced.”
“What’s unusual about this is that the cultures look perfectly healthy. There’s no sign that there is any kind of viral infection going on,” Aylward said.
Aylward said the virus is the largest of its kind ever discovered. It inserts its own genome into the DNA of the host algae, similar to how HIV affects humans.
“It was not known that this could happen in viruses that are quite so big as this one,” Aylward said.
Aylward said future research of the virus may teach scientists more about gene editing techniques.
Their study was published in the journal “Science” and Erazo presented their findings at a conference in France, where she won an award for the best presentation by a graduate student.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
