{"id":154965,"date":"2023-01-09T08:24:43","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T14:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/an-organism-that-can-dine-exclusively-on-viruses-has-been-found-in-a-world-first"},"modified":"2023-01-09T08:24:43","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T14:24:43","slug":"an-organism-that-can-dine-exclusively-on-viruses-has-been-found-in-a-world-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/an-organism-that-can-dine-exclusively-on-viruses-has-been-found-in-a-world-first","title":{"rendered":"An Organism That Can Dine Exclusively on Viruses Has Been Found in a World First"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/an-organism-that-can-dine-exclusively-on-viruses-has-been-found-in-a-world-first2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A type of freshwater plankton has become the first organism seen thriving on a diet of viruses, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/virus\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_self\">Viruses<\/a> are often consumed incidentally by a range wide of organisms, and may even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fmicb.2020.524828\/full\">season the diets<\/a> of certain marine protists. But to qualify as a true step in the food chain \u2013 described as virovory \u2013 viruses ought to contribute a significant amount of energy or nutrients to their consumer.<\/p>\n<p>The microbe <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Halteria\"><em>Halteria<\/em><\/a> is a common genus of protist known to flit about as its hair-like cilia propel it through the water. Not only did laboratory samples of the ciliate consume chloroviruses added to its environment, the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chlorovirus\">giant virus<\/a> fueled <em>Halteria\u2019s <\/em>growth and increased its population size.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A type of freshwater plankton has become the first organism seen thriving on a diet of viruses, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the US. Viruses are often consumed incidentally by a range wide of organisms, and may even season the diets of certain marine protists. But to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}