: Research finds that viruses may have eyes and ears on us #IndiaNEWS #News Washington: New research suggests that viruses are using information from their environment to decide when to sit tight inside

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Research finds that viruses may have eyes and ears on us #IndiaNEWS #News
Washington: New research suggests that viruses are using information from their environment to decide when to sit tight inside their hosts and when to multiply and burst out, killing the host cell. Right now, viruses are exploiting the ability to monitor their environment to their benefit. But in the future, we could exploit it to their detriment, said one of the authors.
A viruss ability to sense its environment, including elements produced by its host, adds another layer of complexity to the viral-host interaction, says Ivan Erill, professor of biological sciences and senior author on the new paper. Right now, viruses are exploiting that ability to their benefit. But in the future, he says, we could exploit it to their detriment.
The new study focused on bacteriophages viruses that infect bacteria, often referred to simply as phages. The phages in the study can only infect their hosts when the bacterial cells have special appendages, called pili and flagella, that help the bacteria move and mate. The bacteria produce a protein called CtrA that controls when they generate these appendages. The new paper shows that many appendage-dependent phages have patterns in their DNA where the CtrA protein can attach, called binding sites. A phage having a binding site for a protein produced by its host is unusual, Erill says.
Even more surprising, Erill and the papers first author Elia Mascolo, a Ph. D. student in Erills lab, found through detailed genomic analysis that these binding sites were not unique to a single phage, or even a single group of phages. Many different types of phages had CtrA binding sites but they all required their hosts to have pili and/or flagella to infect them. It couldnt be a coincidence, they decided.
The ability to monitor CtrA levels has been invented multiple times throughout evolution by different phages that infect different bacteria, Erill says. When distantly related species demonstrate a similar trait, its called convergent evolution and it indicates that the trait is definitely useful.
Another wrinkle in the story: The first phage in which the research team identified CtrA binding sites infects a particular group of bacteria called Caulobacterales. Caulobacterales are an especially well-studied group of bacteria, because they exist in two forms: a swarmer form that swims around freely, and a stalked form that attaches to a surface. The swarmers have pili/flagella, and the stalks do not. In these bacteria, CtrA also regulates the cell cycle, determining whether a cell will divide evenly into two more of the same cell type, or divide asymmetrically to produce one swarmer and one stalk cell.
Because the phages can only infect swarmer cells, its in their best interest only to burst out of their host when there are many swarmer cells available to infect.

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