Posted on 12/30/2022 9:03:28 PM PST by algore
Name a type of organic matter and chances are some type of organism has evolved to eat it. Plants, meat, algae, insects and bacteria are all consumed by different creatures, but now scientists have discovered something new on the menu – viruses.
Since viruses are found absolutely everywhere, it’s inevitable that organisms will consume them incidentally. But researcher John DeLong at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln wanted to find out if any microbes actively ate viruses, and whether such a diet could support the physiological growth of individuals and the population growth of a community.
“They’re made up of really good stuff: nucleic acids, a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous,” said DeLong. “Everything should want to eat them. So many things will eat anything they can get ahold of. Surely something would have learned how to eat these really good raw materials.”
To test the hypothesis, DeLong and his team collected samples of pond water, isolated different microbes, and then added large amounts of chlorovirus, a freshwater inhabitant that infects green algae. Over the next few days the team tracked the population size of the viruses and the other microbes to see if the latter was eating the former.
And sure enough, one particular microbe seemed to be snacking on the viruses – a ciliate known as Halteria. In water samples with no other food source for the ciliates, Halteria populations grew by about 15 times within two days, while chlorovirus levels dropped 100-fold. In control samples without the virus, Halteria didn’t grow at all.
In follow-up tests, the team tagged chlorovirus DNA with fluorescent dye, and found that Halteria cells soon began to glow. This helped confirm that Halteria was indeed consuming the virus.
the newly coined term “virovory” can now take its place among herbivory, carnivory et al
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
I can hear the advertisements now:
"Spikavora, it's what your blood cells crave"
one of our customers says:
"I find that Spikeavora is great, after 25 booster shots and having infections every other week I am now in my second week without testing positive. I am feeling like I might be released from quarantine any day, get yours NOW!"
Covid Eaters, get your covid eaters here!!!
CovidBeaters...buy ‘em by the pint or by the quart!
Dr Fubar is funding a virus that eats organisms
It has been two years since my last (and only) cOVID “test” and eight months since my last Confession.
It would seem that virivore would be expected.
One problem though is that you have the Latin word vir meaning man (male person), then the word virus. They are different in the nominative (vir and virus) and the accusative (virum and virus) but the same in other cases.
Litscape has 23 matches for *VORE and they all end in -IVORE.
Yep. Then a Faucivore.
There’s actually two such critters.
The other one is ivermectis miligramus
Now you've done it. Search for a gender neutral term begins in ..3..2...1.
virus is grammatically neuter; vir is masculine.
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