Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, virologist Sergey Netesov, head of the laboratory of bionanotechnology, microbiology and virology of the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Novosibirsk State University, Sergey Netesov, told Gazeta that the most useful viruses can be considered bacteriophages and symbiotic viruses. .
Bacteriophages are bacterial viruses that humans can serve. While scientists do not know the exact origin of these pathogens, there is a theory that some bacteria evolved as their weapon against others. In the same way, they can be used by the person by destroying pathogenic bacteria. This is especially important as more and more bacteria are becoming drug resistant.
“The fact is that, for example, an antibiotic can be stored for years, and a bacteriophage can only be stored for a month in the freezer. But I believe bacteriophages as antibacterial drugs have a great future. Because the number of drug-resistant bacteria is increasing,” Netesov explained.
There are also symbiotic viruses in nature that live inside the body and give it evolutionary advantages.
“For example, we studied ticks infected and uninfected with the tick-borne encephalitis virus. Infected ticks turned out to be more active when searching for animals to which they cling. Now something similar is happening for wolves. For example, leaders of wolf packs have certain chronic infections and viruses. Moreover The correlation with Toxoplasma infection is quite strong: to be a leader, you have to be infected, ”the virologist gave an example.
The person also has similar viruses that do not cause disease. However, it is not yet known whether they are useful or not.
“For example, there is a virus that is suspected of causing hepatitis as yet unknown. Because there are still chronic liver diseases whose cause cannot be found. This is about 3-4% of all liver diseases, in which the causative agent is unknown, ”concluded Netesov.
Read more about the world’s deadliest, cunning and rapidly mutating viruses report Netesov “socialbites.ca”.
had before listed pathogens that can be carried by “battle mosquitoes”.