Researchers have witnessed two viruses – influenza A and respiratory syncytial virus – fuse together to form a single, hybrid virus.
While competition between viruses has been researched in some detail, this new finding provides researchers with an unusual example of one virus coopting another for its own benefits.
"This kind of hybrid virus has never been described before," virologist and senior author Pablo Murcia told The Guardian. "We are talking about viruses from two completely different families combining together with the genomes and the external proteins of both viruses. It is a new type of virus pathogen."
The hybrid virus looks like a gecko's foot under the microscope, with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) forming the legs and influenza A virus forming the toes.
It was discovered during a lab-based experiment designed to analyze interactions between viruses during infection to better understand clinical outcomes, pathogen behavior, and transmission.
Last edited by unnamednewbie13 (2022-12-13 19:18:12)
Last edited by uziq (2022-12-13 19:40:34)
Personally I think its likely this happened more than once.uziq wrote:
i mean, it's highly likely that material brought in from outer space on superheated rocks was crucial to life starting on this planet in the first place. plus there are any number of organisms and lifeforms that can survive in the most extreme of conditions, whether it's of temperature, pressure, light or lack thereof, salinity or pH, etc.
OKjust don't look into prions. they are basically indestructible and functionally immortal, and also very very bad news for our nervous systems. and we are contributing to more and more of them being scattered, willy nilly, around habitats and ecosystems every single year.
1,000 years seems like a long time from our perspective, for other things it probably isn't.unnamednewbie13 wrote:
I mean I already have. I just think stuff that can survive in extreme conditions or be woken up like Dracula from a thousand year slumber or whatever are really interesting.
Front row seats to the Anthropocene Mass Extinction.
https://forums.bf2s.com//viewtopic.php? … 2#p4016772uziq wrote:
just don't look into prions
And I'm vegetarian.uziq wrote:
the good news is that you were going to stay inside for the rest of your life, anyway.
a lot of people who develop things like JKD get it 'randomly', seemingly from nowhere. if you're living in a state with a lot of agribusiness and factory farming, i don't think you have to directly eat an animal to be in danger of coming into contact with contaminated groundwater or soil/produce, etc. again, prions are a hardier foe than a food-borne bacterium.Dilbert_X wrote:
And I'm vegetarian.uziq wrote:
the good news is that you were going to stay inside for the rest of your life, anyway.
the current dominant strains of covid don't affect the lungs. and your average case of non-serious, non-ICU covid wouldn't leave you with serious lung scarring for 2+ years. probably at more respiratory risk from car particulates and smoking tbh.Dilbert_X wrote:
So anyway.
RSV Is taking off because
[ ] The pathologically hypersocial have been cooped up too long and this is god's way of saying lockdowns are bad
[ ] Covid has damaged people's lungs and made them more vulnerable to things like RSV
I feel almost normal now (just a little pain deep in the chest). I was hoping I'd be able to test negative today so I could play softball tonight, but nope! Probs gonna miss the company Christmas party tomorrow during the day, a bday party tomorrow night, and the party my friend was having to watch the annual boat parade on Saturday night. I'll take a test every day and hopefully I can pass a test by Sunday morning so I can make my tee time.KEN-JENNINGS wrote:
Tested positive for COVID. Fatigue and lots of pressure in my head are the annoying symptoms. Lame
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/december/deadly-gasDilbert_X wrote:
These things go in cycles, perfectly likely to be a statistical anomaly, that and antibiotic resistance is increasing.
uziq wrote:
people's immune responses are down right across the board. even common colds seem particularly severe in the last 1–2 years.
or how do you explain UK schoolchildren dying of Strep A? that's not a lung infection.
OK so nothing about "people's immune responses being down right across the board", most likely its just people are mixing more and probably its evolved.The current increase in severe paediatric GAS infections in the UK is said to be part of a rebound of infections caused by a relaxation of Covid-19 social distancing measures. In spite of the novelty of Sars-CoV-2, our understanding of its evolution during the pandemic is vastly greater than for GAS, whose incessantly changing genome is more than sixty times bigger than the virus’s. Making sense of it is an enormously complex task.
admission rates even for the very young and infants is going up for flu-type illnesses."We are concerned that flu-related hospital admissions have been rising, with admission rates highest among very young children, and we urge parents and carers to get their children vaccinated with the painless nasal spray offered to this group.
Last edited by uziq (2022-12-17 01:40:31)
I definitely had rsv twice this year. Never even knew wtf was rsv until now.uziq wrote:
except that’s the reason for flu, cold and RSV admissions being up. it is more virulent and more consequential this year.
the blogpost is about strep A. i stand corrected on that. early supposition was that it was in some ways related to schoolchidren and the pandemic. if a virologist says otherwise, i’m happy to be corrected.
