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The discovery came from a student project led by professor Tagide deCarvalho at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County which is outlined in the Journal of the International Society for Microbial Ecology.
The so-called MiniFlayer "viral hitchhiker" was found about 30 miles northwest of Washington, DC in a soil sample in Poolesville, MD after a virus satellite they named MindFlayer was detected in 2019.
"No one had ever seen one virus latching onto another virus, until anomalous sequencing results sent a UMBC team down a rabbit hole leading to a first-of-its-kind discovery," reads a report on the discovery by UMBC.
"Yes, viruses can actually get sick," according to a report in Scientific America. "Even better, as karmic justice would have it, the culprits turn out to be other viruses."
In a press release, the university said the groundbreaking discovery sets the stage for future work to figure out how the satellite attaches, how common this phenomenon is, and much more.
"It’s possible that a lot of the bacteriophages that people thought were contaminated were actually these satellite-helper systems,” deCarvalho said. “So now, with this paper, people might be able to recognize more of these systems."
Click here for the full release.
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