Jan 29, 2018
Never-Before-Seen Viruses With Weird DNA Were Just Discovered in The Ocean
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: biotech/medical
The ocean is crowded. As many as 10 million viruses can be found squirming in a single millilitre of its water, and it turns out they have friends we never even knew about.
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown family of viruses that dominate the ocean and can’t be detected by standard lab tests. Researchers suspect this viral multitude may already exist outside the water — maybe even inside us.
“We don’t think it’s ocean-specific at all,” says environmental microbiologist Martin Polz from MIT.