“This opens the door for further research and a better understanding of how viruses can be harnessed for use in medicine and agriculture,” said the Tel Aviv University professor in charge of the research.
A group of researchers from Tel Aviv University discovered more than 100,000 types of RNA viruses which until now were unknown to science. With this, the number of these organisms that have been identified by the academy is multiplied by nine.
The researchers have even managed to specify which organism they are likely to attack, so it is hoped that this discovery can help in the development of antimicrobial drugs and in the protection against fungi and parasites that are harmful to agriculture, reported the Tel Aviv University it’s a statement.
The study was led by PhD student Uri Neri under the direction of the teacher Uri Gophna from the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at Tel Aviv University.
The research was carried out in collaboration with the research centers of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the United Genome Institute (JGI), both from the US, and the Pasteur Institute from France.
Viruses are genetic parasites, which must infect a living cell in order to replicate their genetic information, produce new viruses, and complete their infection cycle. Some viruses cause disease (such as the coronavirus), but most are not harmful and even live inside our bodies without us realizing it.
Neri says the study used new computing technologies to extract genetic information collected from thousands of different sampling points around the world, such as oceans, soils, or sewage.
The researchers developed a sophisticated computational tool that distinguishes between the genetic material of RNA viruses and that of the hosts.
The discovery allowed the researchers to reconstruct how viruses underwent various acclimatization processes throughout their evolutionary development to adapt to different hosts.
By analyzing their findings, the researchers were able to identify viruses suspected of infecting various pathogenic microorganisms, opening up the possibility of using viruses to control them.
“The system we developed makes it possible to perform in-depth evolutionary analyzes and understand how various RNA viruses have developed throughout evolutionary history. One of the key questions in microbiology is how and why viruses transfer genes between them,” said Professor Gophna.
“Compared to DNA viruses, the diversity and functions of RNA viruses in microbial ecosystems are not well understood. In our study, we found that RNA viruses are neither unusual in the evolutionary landscape nor all that different from DNA viruses. This opens the door for further research and a better understanding of how viruses can be harnessed for use in medicine and agriculture,” he noted.