This organism is a type of plankton found in clean water. (Representational photo: Getty)
For the first time a virus-eating organism has been found. That is, many deadly viruses of the world can be eradicated through this organism. Scientist observed that this organism increases its population 15 times faster by eating viruses. While reducing the number of viruses hundreds of times faster.
The whole world is troubled by viruses. Just look at Corona. Scientists have found such an organism for the first time, which eats viruses. That is, it kills the virus. This discovery has been made by scientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US. In the future, this organism may be used to control viruses.
In fact, a type of plankton found in clean water is the first such organism in the world, which fills its stomach only and only with viruses. Its breakfast, lunch and dinner are all virus. It is not that only this eats the virus. But it is the only creature that only eats viruses. There are other organisms, which eat viruses when needed. Scientists have named the virus-eating organisms as Virovory.
If a study is done on virus-eating organisms, then it can be helpful in the future. (Photo: Getty)
The microbe i.e. plankton that only eats viruses is called Halteria. It is a protist organism. It keeps waving its hair like thin trunk in the water, catches the virus and eats it. Even in the lab, this organism eats Chlorovirus. This is a giant virus. Means virus shaped like bacteria. By eating this, Halteria has increased its population in clean water sources around the world.
After eating chlorovirus, Halteria breaks its body into pieces to form new Halteria. Those who repeat the same process after eating chlorovirus. John Dilong, the lead researcher who made this discovery, says that the relationship between the virus and Halteria is amazing. Halteria, which eat the virus and then increase their population, are producing a large amount of energy. That is, if we look at the world level, carbon cycling is happening on a large scale.
In future, treatment of many diseases can be discovered with the help of organisms that eat viruses. (Photo: Getty)
John says why an organism eats the virus. This is a big question. Viruses don't just cause harm. If seen as food, then the amount of amino acids, nucleic acids, lipids, nitrogen and phosphorus is very high in them. That means virus is a complete food for these organisms. To know this, John took pond water in a container inside the lab. Chlorovirus was put in it. Halteria and Paramecium were already in the water.
Paramecium also fed on chloroviruses but their population did not increase. But as soon as Halteria started eating viruses, their population started increasing rapidly. In two days the population of Halteria increased 15 times. While the population of viruses decreased hundreds of times. John says that this is a big discovery. There is a need to do more research on this, which we are doing. We have to find out whether this phenomenon is happening in the forests as well. This study has recently been published in PNAS.