What I've Been Reading

A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer. There are very few science writers in the world who are capable of packing so much information, so fluently in less than 100 pages. There is no question, Carl Zimmer is one of the best of the best science writers in the world. Between, viruses are yet another reason to go vegetarian and to embrace the IVF meat in the future.  

• Rhino Virus: Common cold and there is no vaccine yet. Human rhino-viruses may help train our immune system not to overreact to minor triggers, instead directing their assaults to real threats. Perhaps we should not think of cold as ancient enemies but as a wise old tutors.
• Influenza Virus: Originated from Birds, they are very adaptive and hence evolves fast.Yet another reason to stop factory farming and even better reason to go vegetarian.
• Human Papillomavirus: Two-third of the HPV co-exists peacefully with their hosts (us) but they have the potential of transforming rabbits into jackpoles and men into trees. They cause cervical cancer.  Current HPV vaccine targets only 2 strains of the virus (which accounts for 70% of cervical cancers).
• Bacteriophages: A virus which makes bacteria it's host. Phages since they kill bacteria without harming humans, they are used to treat bacteria infections. A human friendly virus!!
• Marine Phages: Every liter of sea water contains around hundred billion viruses but only a minute fraction of them infect humans. Marine viruses are powerful because they are so infectious that invade a new microbe host ten trillion times a second, and every day they kill about half of all bacteria in world's ocean. In 200 liters of seawater, scientists typically find 5000 genetically distinct kinds of viruses. In a kilogram of marine sediment, there may be million kinds. Thanks to gene borrowing, viruses may be directly responsible for a lot of the world's oxygen. 
• Endogenous Retroviruses: Over millions of years, our genomes have picked up a vast amount of DNA from dead viruses. Each of us carry almost a hundred thousand fragments of endogenous retrovirus DNA in our genome, making up about 8 percent of our DNA. They are dangerous parasites but few of them are symbiotic as well. 
• Human Immunodeficiency Virus: There's good reason to worry about any HIV vaccine, even one that shows promise in small trials. That's because HIV is evolving in overdrive. HIV belongs to a group of viruses - including influenza - that are very sloppy in their replication. They create many mutants in very little time. These mutants provide the raw material for natural selection to act on, producing viruses that are better and better adapted. Within a single host, natural selection can improve the ability of viruses to escape detection of the immune system. 
• West Nile Virus: It's not clear how the virus survivesNorth American winters. It's possible that they survive in low levels among mosquitos in the south, where the winters aren't so harsh. It's also possible that mosquitos infect their own eggs with West Nile virus. When infected eggs hatch the next spring, the new generation is ready to start infecting the birds all over again. There is neither a vaccine to prevent West Nile virus nor there are any drugs to treat the infection. 
• Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome & Ebola: The virus started in Chinese bats. From bats to catlike mammal called civet and then to humans. SARS was a very young virus when scientists discovered it, and the speed at which it was discovered helped make it a relatively small outbreak. 
• Smallpox: In 2010, the WHO reopened the debate over whether to finally destroy the two remaining officially declared stocks smallpox in Russia and the United States. Today scientists know the full genetic sequence of the smallpox virus. And they have the technology necessary to synthesize the smallpox genome from scratch. 
• Viruses are not "living" beings: Viruses carry genes encoded either in DNA, or it's single-stranded version, RNA. For a number of reasons, RNA is an inherently more error-prone molecule to copy. Hence, RNA viruses like influenza and HIV, have smaller genomes than DNA viruses. Forced to carry tiny genomes, viruses could not make room for genes that did anything beyond make new viruses and help those viruses escape destruction. They could carry genes to let them eat. They could not turn raw ingredients into new genes and proteins on their own. They could not grow. They could not expel waste. They could not defend against hot and cold. They could not reproduce by splitting into two. All those nots added up to one great, devastating Not. Viruses were not alive. 

Check out the brilliant essay, Waiting For The Final Plague by Nathan Wolfe and his TED talk.