Jesper Got Published: This week in Virology

I mentioned the podcast This Week in Virology a while back. I wrote them an email asking on the subject of Virus and Symbiosis. Here’s what I asked:

Dear fellows of Twiv,

It is my understanding that us humans live in peace and symbiosis with some bacteria. Is there any such arrangement with any virus?

Another way to phrase the question; if all viruses were to be removed from the world, would we be better off?

A follow-up question, even more abstracted from the lab bench; if all viruses were gone, is it reasonable to believe that new ones would come into existence? How fast? From where? In one of the twiv episodes someone said “Any suffciently complex system has parasites”, so I assume given time something is bound to fill the niche of viruses.

All the best,

–Jesper Hogstrom

Actually, I had learned from the previous episode (#46) – which did air after I sent off my question – that there are at least one case of symbiosis between a virus and life. A type of grass that grows in volcanic areas needs to be infected with a fungi and a virus to withstand the heat in the ground.

Anyway, in episode 47, Vincent and Dick elaborated on my question from 49:57 to 58:40 (and Vincent thought it was a great question!).

In short, there are benefits from viruses:

* They speed up evolution by horizontal gene transfer.

* There is so much virus in the oceans, and that turns over a lot of carbon. Removing that and the carbon cycle would change, impacting the ecology greatly.

The ensuing discussion about if virus would re-appear in some way is also very interesting.

I do recommend listening to the entire episode.