Dubbed “MiniFlayer”, a “vampire virus” has been discovered in a soil sample in Maryland, for the very first time in the U.S.
To understand the new discovery, we need to go back a few years. In 2019, a pair of undergraduate students at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County isolated a new virus satellite from a soil bacterium. They named it “MindFlayer”.
But recent research showed there was not one but two microbes attached to each other. The two viruses were harvested from a clump of dirt in Poolesville, Maryland.
Microbiologists from UMBC then gave the satellite a similar name and they called it “MiniFlayer’.
MiniFlayer is a type of virus that latches itself onto the necks of other soil viruses, like a vampire, then travels and thrives on the back of the bigger virus.
Professor Steven Caruso, Lecturer in Biological Sciences at UMBC compares MiniFlayer to a “viral hitchhiker.”
Steven Caruso: In this case, this virus doesn’t need nearly as many genes, is much smaller, and is able to hitchhike, calling it a hitchhiker would be just as reasonable as calling it a vampire virus.
In this case, the helper virus is bacteriophage, which means that it is a natural predator for soil bacterium.
MiniFlayer lost its ability to lie dormant. In response to that, the satellite has gone on the offensive with horror-movie creativity.
Pr. Ivan Erill, a biology Professor at UMBC, compares it to a vampire sinking its teeth into its prey. The team of researchers even found “bite marks” where MiniFlayer’s tendrils were attached.
A recent study in the Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology explains this virus lost the ability to reproduce itself. MiniFlayer takes advantage of another bigger virus by grabbing onto its neck. When they enter cells together, MiniFlayer copies its companion’s genetic to mutate.
Now, having two viruses interacting with each other is not uncommon though. What’s unique is the interaction between the two.
Caruso: That’s all over the place, viruses that need helper, viruses to infect but we’ve never seen one that needed to be attached to another one.
The discovery was made by students Jenell Lewis and Hira Ahmed during a lab workshop with Pr. Caruso.
Caruso: This was part of a class that I teach for junior and senior level biology majors at UMBC and I have 120 students that work in pairs in an elective lab, so it was a pair of students that were working on this virus.”
Researchers are looking into using phages as medicine against bacteria.
“Viral satellites have the potential to transform how researchers understand antiviral strategies, but there is still a lot to learn about them,” Pr. Erill wrote for UMBC Magazine.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Thomas Legrand.