Bacteria are common sources of infection, but these microorganisms can themselves be infected by even smaller agents: viruses. A new analysis of the interactions between bacteria and viruses has revealed patterns that could help scientists working to understand which viruses infect which bacteria in the microbial world.
A meta-analysis of the interactions shows that the infection patterns exhibit a nested structure, with hard-to-infect bacteria infected by generalist viruses and easy-to-infect bacteria attacked by both generalist and specialist viruses.
“Although it is well known that individual viruses do not infect all bacteria, this study provides an understanding of possibly universal patterns or principles governing the set of viruses able to infect a given bacteria and the set of bacteria that a given virus can infect,” said Joshua Weitz, an assistant professor in the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology…
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