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Apr 6, 2020

Viruses don’t have a metabolism; but some have the building blocks for one

Posted by in category: biological

In satellite photos of the Earth, clouds of bright green bloom across the surface of lakes and oceans as algae populations explode in nutrient-rich water. From the air, the algae appear to be the primary players in the ecological drama unfolding below.

But those we credit for influencing the aquatic environment at the base of the food chain may be under the influence of something else: whose can reconfigure their hosts’ metabolism.

In a new study published in Nature Communications, a research team from Virginia Tech reported that they had found a substantial collection of genes for metabolic cycles—a defining characteristic of cellular life—in a wide range of “.”

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