A Virus Named "Sputnik" Discovered to Hijack & Infect Other Viruses

Anybody who's ever caught a cold - which at the last count was everybody ever several times over - will be pleased to know that viruses can apparently get sick.  Even better, they're made sick by another virus.  I believe I speak for everyone when I say "Booyah, how do YOU like it you capsidised gits!"

Viruses are the ultimate example of KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid.  Nothing but a core of genetic material in a protein shell, they may not be able to do anything but replicate (and even then only with a host cell), but they also outnumber us umpty-billion to one. Their simplicity also makes them hard to kill - antibiotics work by interfering with critical chemistry in bacteria, but since viruses hijack host cells to multiply you can't take them out without wrecking the sick person too.

The protein shell delivers the genetic core of the virus into an unsuspecting healthy cell.  This core then commandeers the molecular machinery of the victim, setting up a factory which pumps out copies of itself while kind of messing the place up something terminal. Researchers at the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have now discovered a virus, named "Sputnik" for its extreme simplicity, which can hijack the viral factory of another pathogen and insert its own code into the program.  The double-victimised cell now manufactures Sputniks, and copies of the original virus which do manage to be made suffer from damage and imperfections because of this second-super-sub-cellular-sabotage.

Even better, Sputnik's chosen victim is one of the biggest viruses ever discovered, Acanthamoeba Polyphaga, so huge that for years people thought it was a bacteria and featuring 900 genes to Sputniks 21.  It's truly a pathogenic David and Goliath - with the tiny (haha) downside that whoever wins, the battleground loses.  And by "battleground", we mean "poor bloody living thing that's sick."

Posted by Luke McKinney.

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Source: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080806/full/454677a.html

Comments

[Markenrode]

Perhaps scientists can someday re-engineer viruses (or bacteria) to attack other viruses (or bacteria) that make us sick. So you could create a virus that would, say, attack the cold virus that has made so many of us sick at one time or another. You could then start something of a war among the little buggers with us as the beneficiaries of it.

[Jay - Crazy Vibe]

We need one to fight the HIV virus.