Monday, January 02, 2023

Virovores eat viruses

 From the realm of the amazing: scientists have discovered an organism that eats viruses. 

"... 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."

Source

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