Hot Spring Yields New Hybrid Viral Genome

[xchrom]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hot-spring-yields-new-hybrid-viral-genome

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43502224@N00/2657025141/

In the hostile environment of a bubbling volcanic hot spring, a team of researchers at Portland State University in Oregon has discovered a new viral genome that seems to be the product of recombination between a DNA virus and an RNA virus — a natural chimaera not seen before. Their findings appeared on 19 April in the journal Biology Direct.

“It’s a mythological beast of a virus, but it actually exists,” says virologist Ken Stedman, who presented his lab’s findings at NASA’s Astrobiology Conference on 17 April in Atlanta, Georgia.

In the bacterial communities that populate the acidic waters of Boiling Springs Lake in northern California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, “viruses are the only predators”, Stedman says. To get a better handle on what types of viruses are present there, he and his colleagues performed a metagenomic analysis of hundreds of thousands of viral sequences from a lake sample. The results included something unexpected: a piece of DNA coding for a protein that until now has only been seen in the capsid or ‘head’ of RNA viruses. By comparing the sequence with those of other genetic fragments, they were able to arrive at a complete viral genome. In the genome, the RNA-like sequence sat adjacent to another sequence for a replication protein that is unique to DNA viruses.

The resultant single-stranded circular genome, dubbed BSL RDHV (short for Boiling Springs Lake RNA–DNA hybrid virus), seems to be the result of a recombination event between two completely unrelated virus groups. The RNA gene did not come from a virus that could produce reverse transcriptase, the enzyme required to change RNA into DNA, so it’s unclear how the RNA gene ended up in the DNA genome. “We have no idea how it happened, but we know it happened,” says Stedman.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

1. Very cool. Thanks for posting.

Love stuff like this.

Let's just hope the virus doesn't hop the lab and get into the general public. No tellin' what would happen.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Fingers crossed for zombie plague! nt

[Hikikomori]

3. No worries

This virus genome was found in a boiling acidic lake where it probably infects and kills only bacteria and/or archaea; both single-celled organisms. I don't think there is any reason for humans to fear its escape from the lake, and it probably wouldn't "survive" outside of its hot, acidic home anyway.