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A mysterious 80 nm amoeba virus with a near-complete “ORFan genome”
- chc 7y agoThe title kind of makes it sound like "As far as we can tell, the virus has no genes," but the actual discovery here is that the virus doesn't share any genes with any other viruses that we know of. Which is still weird, but far less mysterious than it sounded.
- monadic2 7y ago> Which is still weird, but far less mysterious than it sounded. Mysterious, maybe, but what is its effectiveness against humans and how long until it is recognized?
- ZenPsycho 7y agothis is an amoeba virus. most viruses do not harm humans. harming or killing your host is generally a bad evolutionary strategy so viruses that do this are relatively rare enough that unless a piece of writing explicitly identifies specific harm to humans, you can assume it most likely isn’t harmful and never will be.
- monadic2 7y ago> this is an amoeba virus. most viruses do not harm humans. harming or killing your host is generally a bad evolutionary strategy so viruses that do this are relatively rare enough that unless a piece of writing explicitly identifies specific harm to humans, you can assume it most likely isn’t harmful and never will be. Can you say this virus is not harmful to humans?
- hdiriekei 7y agoAmoeba is almost as far away from humans as you can get. It's like a Z80 Spectrum virus infecting a Windows computer.
- jolmg 7y agoI hadn't realized before that the virus analogy carried that far. That's pretty cool.
- monadic2 7y agoDon't be carried away by their rhetoric.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- erikpukinskis 7y agoViruses by definition can’t replicate without a host’s help so the software/operating system analogy is very apt.
- pazimzadeh 7y agoWell, macrophages are a lot like amoeba. And we already know that diseases that can infect amoeba sometimes infect macrophages. From amoeba to macrophages: exploring the molecular mechanisms of Legionella pneumophila infection in both hosts https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23949285 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23949285 Ancient bacteria–amoeba relationships and pathogenic animal bacteria https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2002460 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
- monadic2 7y agoSo—no, you can't say that it is non-infectious to humans.
- ZenPsycho 7y agoand you can't say there isn't an invisible pink unicorn standing next to me.
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- clucas 7y agoI don't think the parent commenter should have the burden of proof here...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ZenPsycho 7y agoYou can't prove a negative. But since taking a basic biology class in highschool 25 years ago, I haven't heard of any radical new discoveries in virology that would indicate viruses becoming more harmful than 99.9% benign. Highschool biology is definitely not the end all be all. If you find anything, it might make a cool thing to post on hacker news.
- ufo 7y agoBy the way, the name (Yara) is a reference to a mythical mermaid from Amazonian folklore.
- jeffdavis 7y agoI didn't know an amoeba could be a virus.
- undersuit 7y agoIt's just how you state what the virus infects. Like a potato virus, a protist virus, an apple virus, an Apple virus or a Windows virus.
- muricula 7y agoI'm no biologist, but I think it's a virus which infects amoeba. By definition, viruses aren't alive, and amoebas are.
- shanxS 7y ago> By definition, viruses aren't alive, and amoebas are. Interesting, I thought we don't have a definition for "alive".
- dekhn 7y agoThere's no universally accepted definition but most biologists would say that viruses are not alive because they lack metabolism.
- DoctorOetker 7y agoright they are "not alive", but do have a "life cycle". How else would one define what a single log reduction (one tenth of virus particles surviving) means per given "UV dose" or fluence.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoA dragonfly isn’t a dragon it’s a fly.
- ars 7y agoRelated (different info, so not exactly a dupe): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276105