Month: September 2022

GLOBAL CYCLING IMPACT. “Viruses are the most abundant entities across all habitats, and a major reservoir of genetic diversity affecting biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem dynamics.” https://lnkd.in/gGriiyJ View in LinkedIn

BAD GUY VIRUSES that have caused pandemics get the popular attention, and have killed hundreds of millions of people over the centuries. The 1918 explosive influenza pandemic killed more people than than the first world war. These have been fixed in the public imagination as the portrait of viruses, just nasty germs. https://lnkd.in/gtZ2Tfk View in LinkedIn

SILENT MAJORITY. “Whether they are host-associated or free-living, we now know that most viruses (like microbes in general) are not pathogenic to humans, plants, or animals.” https://lnkd.in/g35Hmrp View in LinkedIn

DROP IN THE BUCKET. “An updated literature survey identified 1,407 recognized species of human pathogen, 58% of which are zoonotic. Of the total, 177 are regarded as emerging or reemerging.” A drop in the bucket compared to the millions of species of viruses estimated. https://lnkd.in/gJzt_vK View in LinkedIn

130 HUMAN DISEASE VIRUS CURATED DATABASE, (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics). 130 out of millions of species are pathogenic. Here is the updated list of all the bad guys. https://lnkd.in/gCk2PYC View in LinkedIn

EARLY DISEASE FOCUS. “Since the late 1800s, the discovery of new viruses was a gradual process. Viruses were described one by one using a suite of techniques such as (electron) microscopy and viral culture. Investigators were usually interested in a disease state within an organism, and expeditions in viral ecology were rare.” https://lnkd.in/g35Hmrp View in LinkedIn

HOW MANY TYPES OF VIRUS EXIST is a different question from how many individual viral particles exist (10(31)). “At present only a small part of the total diversity of viruses has been studied, with analyses of samples from humans finding that about 20% of the virus sequences recovered have not been seen before, and samples from the environment, such as from seawater and ocean sediments, finding that the large majority of sequences are completely novel.” The large majority! https://lnkd.in/eF3wTsF View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first weekend on the theme of viral dark matter. Physics is thwarted by the presence of a majority of the physical world being unknown dark matter. So with biology. But in the case of biology, we have adopted an ostrich pose to account for our ignorance, with an early focus only on disease, and a persistent and willful attitude that these are non-living (and thus irrelevant) entities. A few pioneers are trying to pull biologists out of the Dark Ages. View in LinkedIn

Scientists replace skin of 'butterfly child' http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/health/skin-replacement-transplant-success/index.html View in LinkedIn

Alternative US group honouring Paris climate accord demands 'seat at the table' View in LinkedIn