New virus breaks the rules of infection

Human viruses are like a fine chocolate truffle: It takes only one to get the full experience. At least, that’s what scientists thought a few days ago. Now a new study published is making researchers rethink how some viruses could infect animals. A team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases has found a mosquito virus that’s broken up into pieces. And the mosquito needs to catch several of the pieces to get an infection. “It’s the most bizarre thing,” says Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney, who wasn’t involved in the study. It’s like the virus is dismembered, he says. “If you compare it to the human body, it’s like a person would have their legs, trunk and arms all in different places,” Holmes says. “Then all the pieces come together in some way to work as one single virus. I don’t think anything else in nature...