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Newly Discovered Virus Widespread in Human Gut
A newly discovered virus has been found by a San Diego State University team to live inside more than half of all human gut cells sampled. Exploring genetic material found in intestinal samples, the international team uncovered the CrAssphage virus. They say the virus could influence the behaviour of some of the most common bacteria in our gut. Researchers say the virus has the genetic fingerprint of a bacteriophage - a type of virus known to infect bacteria. Phages may work to control the behaviour of bacteria they infect - some make it easier for bacteria to inhabit in their environments while others allow bacteria to become more potent. [Study lead Dr. Robert] Edwards said: "In some way phages are like wolves in the wild, surrounded by hares and deer. "They are critical components of our gut ecosystems, helping control the growth of bacterial populations and allowing a diversity of species." According to the team, CrAssphage infects one of the most common types of bacteria in our guts.
National Geographic gives some idea why a virus so common in our gut should have evaded discovery for so long, but at least CrAssphage finally has a Wikipedia page of its own.
come on...
Why did the scientists call it "CrAssphace"? Don't they realize that it sounds a lot like "see our ass face" in English? Or are they just playing a joke on us?
That sounds like the name of a type of a virus that infects operating systems instead of humans.
That's all, did you expect a joke?
Vidiians are going to be pissed.
OK, I wondered. I'm sure you did. It is short for 'cross Assembler' - the software used to sequence the genome (I skimmed the paper). Not what you thought. No.
No shit.
'The circular viral genome is around 97 kbp in size and contains 80 predicted open reading frames.' from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrAssphage: So it's a 97 kilobyte circular virus with 80 frames of code?
Well hopefully someone will add it to the virus dbs fast :)
I hear if you take "aciphex" (ass effects) .. you be good to go!!!
it smell like ASS up in here!
Lol, so you guys finally discovered it! Well you're too late, haha. I am now going to invest my points in heart failure and liver failure and your doctors will never have a cure in time!
My new heavy metal band, come check us out on tuesday nights, $2 PBRs
We're just ecosystems of microbes fighting and fucking, and eww,peeing inside us!
I don't care how big it is, so long as it's in Source Control
I don't know what the "ass" part of the name signifies
The Nat Geo article states that crAss stands for the technique used to piece together fragments of the virus's genome: "They called it crAssphage after the cross-assembly method that revealed its existence."
Nyquist's theorem states that you have to sample twice to make sure you get both the high and the low points.
So does this mean that as well as the bacteria that we have living in a symbiotic relationship with us, there's viruses in our internal ecosystems that we need to keep us alive as well now?
be the human gunt. What's in there?
I specifically came here to joke about no one shoehorning Obama into this discussion yet. No shit.
You people are amazing.
Looks like the virus acts as a catalyst; Helping other viruses in reacting fast and become more potent !!!
I'm the last author on the paper and it was discovered in my bioinformatics lab in the CS department at SDSU ...
It was named after our analysis software, crAss (cross assembly) for comparing DNA sequences from different samples (called metagenomics). Here is the crAss article that was published in 2012. Everyone else had missed this virus that was in their DNA samples, most of which have been published (many in high profile journals like Science and Nature). However, it wasn't until we used crAss that we recognized the virus was abundant and everywhere. When we looked at the NCBI database of nucleotide sequences the virus is there and scientists had seen it before in fragments but not been able to piece it together to a whole genome.
We only find the phage in poo samples (they usually call them fecal samples...) from people (oh, and very occasionally on the skin of people, but we suspect they don't have great hygiene). We haven't been able to find it anywhere else that we have looked, and so we don't know what its range is beyond the intestine.
This is one of those situations where the computational biology is really driving the question and the biologists. You often head that bioinformatics is just a support science for "real biology" - that's not true. In this case, based on the questions the bioinformatics group came up with, the biology was supporting the bioinformatics analysis. The biologists were able to determine that the assembly of DNA fragments was correct, and confirm, using PCR, that it is indeed a whole genome.
We (and others) are working on isolating the phage and designing experiments to test exactly what it does in our guts. That doesn't mean we can't speculate!
A couple of answers to comments:
1. Everyone (including the scientists that write grants and papers) confuses gut and fecal samples (sometimes deliberately). To be clear, almost all the samples we have are feces because it is everyone has it, it is easy to get, and everyone seems to want to share it. To get samples other than feces you need surgery, and so the non-fecal samples tend to be associated with other issues that require surgical intervention (and thus are complicated).
2. Noriko (Nori) Cassman is a graduate student (and so doesn't have tenure yet)
3. We were not responsible for the wikipedia page (or the twitter account)
4. phages are viruses that attack bacteria only. There is no evidence or suggestion that this virus does anything to human cells.
I totally agree with you. Childish stuff. Then, even worse, you get 5 people jumping on you. Sadly, this referencing stuff has been a mainstay of Slashdot for so long that, like other oft-repeated lies, it starts to make sense to the majority. "Beef sounds good", "fluoridation is safe and effective in preventing tooth decay", "violent video games don't make you violent", etc. = lies our forefathers told our fathers who told us. The majority really don't Think Of The Children.
I'm the last author on the paper and it was discovered in my bioinformatics lab in the CS department at SDSU ...
Quick question -- I see from your paper, do you have an idea what it looks structurally? A bunch of media sites have pictures but are using what is obviously stock art (mostly of T-even phages), but from your paper I see that it has no close phylogenetic relationship to known phages (and if your group had e-microscopy or crystallographic data, it would have been in the paper already).
Still, I figured someone skilled in virology might be able to identify some capsid sequences or something, and be able to make a decent guess.
The media of AC on slashdot was created becasue people should be able to say what they want without repercussions.
I now think they where wrong and should remove AC.
People will scream about whistle blowers et. al, but that doesn't really happen on slashdot It's mostly an excuse to be an ass, and/or not think. Or troll.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah, not everything is Obama's fault. Lots of things are, but the EPA is a good thing. So is OSHA. Without them we have things like shown on http://www.filtersfast.com/art... to which should be added Fukushima and West, TX fertilizer disasters (which is why urea is a safer nitrogen fertilizer than ammonium nitrate, but requires a carbon source, such as coal or oil or natural gas, to make. On the other hand ammonium nitrate makes a great explosive for makeshift bombs and makeshift ammo for self defense if social security fails and the welfare checks stop coming and an economic apocalypse or an Asian invasion hits, and people start eating each other, but it's also a bad explosive in the hands of terrorists with a cause, such as the Oklahoma bomber bitchin about the Waco TX FBI tank invasion, citing "my head is bloody but unbowed" Invictus poem at his execution. So that West, TX, explosion is a bad thing, but it has a yin yang good side to it, that less ammonium nitrate and more urea will be made and supplied bulk to the public. Liquid ammonia, if handled properly, is cheaper in massive bulk per unit cost, but urea is cheaper to handle in smaller quantities, and can be sold in bags at Walmart, and is safer than both ammonia or ammonium nitrate.) The EPA and OSHA only become a bad thing if they don't properly exercise balance, or common sense, i.e. they are too overbearing, or not overbearing enough. It's difficult to balance economics and jobs with environmental protection, and heavy swings in either direction may happen due to simple incompetence. Rule #1 of any job: we are all incompetent at what we do, some are just more incompetent than others. And the opposite is true too, we are all experts at what we do, some are just better than others. Usually practice makes the masters, and that's why employers look for experience above anything else when trying to get a job done, but experience alone is not a guarantee of great competence.
Am I going to die?
Hit over 50% worldwide infection rate, then start buying the symptoms that kill and spread. Just make sure you've infected the islands before they cut off water and air travel (Greenland, Iceland, Madagascar, New Guinea and New Zealand have defeated me often enough). Oh, and target the countries that are contributing the most to finding a cure.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
" live inside more than half of all human gut cells sampled"
should be "live inside more than half of all humans sampled"
If it is a phage, it wouldn't infect human cells, only bacteria.
Fine, a great discovery, my question is whether the new bug is good for us or bad for us...
should we try and get some for ourselves?