Embark on a journey into the vast viral world, a realm teeming with unseen lifeforms. We'll explore the known and the unknown, shedding light on the mysteries that continue to baffle scientists and fueling our curiosity about these microscopic marvels.
Exploring the minuscule and mysterious world of viruses
Thanks to the invention of the electron microscope, then known as the Übermikroscop, scientists could finally observe-actually see-what was already known to exist
- Just over 80 years later, scientists published the first images of SARS-CoV-2, the novel virus that causes COVID-19
- The value of basic science research conducted many decades earlier became quickly evident in the form of innovative tools for virus detection
- Scientists estimate that 1.67 million yet-to-be discovered viral species exist in mammal and bird hosts
Bloomfield studies how modifying landscapes encourages interactions between people and wildlife and affects infectious disease emergence
Environmental degradation creates more “edges” between humans and animal habitats and thus more possibilities that people may come into contact with viruses to which they previously haven’t been exposed
- Modern travel and our current level of human connectivity around the globe means that an outbreak can quickly become a pandemic when an infected person travels from one location to another
Our future demands a continuation of this approach: putting existing knowledge into action and supporting basic research aimed at deciphering a viral world that we still do not wholly know.
Scientists around the world made history this year by developing an effective vaccine against COVID-19 less than a year after those first images of the novel coronavirus were available.
The discovery of viruses
The term “virus” was first used to describe agents that pass through filters and cannot reproduce without the aid of a living host-plant or animal
- Martinus Beijerinck demonstrated that viruses cause disease by experimenting with sap from sickly tobacco-plant leaves
- Application of freshly extracted sap produced spots on the leaves of healthy plants
- He called the sap from the sick plants contagium vivum fluidum (contagious living fluid)
- This discovery laid the foundation for our ability to identify new viruses, decipher their morphology, and develop treatments against the diseases they cause
How giant viruses expanded our view of the viral world
Patterns that have emerged from basic research on the origins of viruses and their evolution may help inform our preparedness for future pandemics
- There are three dominant models that seem to complete each other
- Virus-first: At the dawn of life, very simple forms of viruses existed before cells
- Escape: Viruses arise from genetic elements that escape from the genes of larger organisms
- Reduction: The “reduction” model is based on a hypothesis that viruses were once larger, free-living organisms that lost their genetic information and ended up smaller and unable to reproduce alone
- Mimivirus, the first “giant virus” was first observed in 2003
