Dataset Information

An Anthropocentric View of the Virosphere-Host Relationship.

ABSTRACT: For over a century, viruses have been known as the most abundant and diverse group of organisms on Earth, forming a virosphere. Based on extensive meta-analyses, we present, for the first time, a wide and complete overview of virus-host network, covering all known viral species. Our data indicate that most of known viral species, regardless of their genomic category, have an intriguingly narrow host range, infecting only 1 or 2 host species. Our data also show that the known virosphere has expanded based on viruses of human interest, related to economical, medical or biotechnological activities. In addition, we provide an overview of the distribution of viruses on different environments on Earth, based on meta-analyses of available metaviromic data, showing the contrasting ubiquity of head-tailed phages against the specificity of some viral groups in certain environments. Finally, we uncovered all human viral species, exploring their diversity and the most affected organic systems. The virus-host network presented here shows an anthropocentric view of the virology. It is therefore clear that a huge effort and change in perspective is necessary to see more than the tip of the iceberg when it comes to virology.

SUBMITTER: Rodrigues RAL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5582082 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

An Anthropocentric View of the Virosphere-Host Relationship.

Rodrigues Rodrigo A L RAL Andrade Ana C Dos S P ACDSP Boratto Paulo V de M PVM Trindade Giliane de S GS Kroon Erna G EG Abrahão Jônatas S JS

Frontiers in microbiology 20170830

For over a century, viruses have been known as the most abundant and diverse group of organisms on Earth, forming a virosphere. Based on extensive meta-analyses, we present, for the first time, a wide and complete overview of virus-host network, covering all known viral species. Our data indicate that most of known viral species, regardless of their genomic category, have an intriguingly narrow host range, infecting only 1 or 2 host species. Our data also show that the known virosphere has expan ...[more]

PMID: 28912772

Similar Datasets

Project description:At the population level, the virus-host relationship is not set up to end with the complete elimination of either or both. Pathogen-resistant individuals will always remain in the host population. In turn, the virus can never completely eliminate the host population, because evolutionarily such an event is a dead end for the virus as an obligate intracellular parasite. A certain existential balance exists in the virus-host relationship. Against this backdrop, viral epidemics and pandemics only become manifest and egregious to human beings when tens and hundreds of thousands of people die and the question emerges what caused the high mortality peaks on the death chart. The answer seems clear; the emerging strain of the virus is new to the host population, and new mutations of the virus and natural selection will lead to a survival of only genetically resistant individuals in a host population. The dangers inherent to a novel virus are due to new features generally inthe molecular structure of proteins, which enable the virus to infect the cells of the host organism more intensively, dramatically challenging host immunity, and thus be transmitted more readily in the host population. In this article, we will concentrate on the facts currently available about severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which has caused COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic and try to predict its development and consequences based on the virus-host relationship. In fact, only two scenarios will occur simultaneously in the very near future: people who are genetically resistant to the virus will get sick, recover, and develop immunity, while people who are sensitive to the virus will need drugs and vaccines, which will have to be researched and developed if they are to recover. If the pandemic does not stop, in a few decades it is anticipated that SARS-CoV-2 will become as safe as the four non-severe acute respiratory syndrome human coronaviruses (HCoV-NL63, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-OC43, and HCoV-229E) currently circulating but causing low mortality in the human population.

Dataset Information

An Anthropocentric View of the Virosphere-Host Relationship.

Publications

An Anthropocentric View of the Virosphere-Host Relationship.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets