When competition is intense, viruses spill over into new hosts

When you think about viruses, you might wonder how they infect, how they spread, and how they kill. These questions are of natural interest—you, after all, could play host to a grand variety of lethal viruses. But do remember: it’s not all about you. A virus’ world contains not just potential hosts, but other viruses. It has competition. This simple fact is often ignored but it has profound implications. In a new study, Lisa Bono from the University of North Carolina has shown that competition between viruses can drive them to spill over into new hosts, imperilling creatures that they never used to infect. Rather than focusing on the viruses we know and dread, Bono worked with phi6, a virus that infects and kills bacteria. This bacteriophage (hereafter just ‘phage’) looks like a lunar lander, that docks onto the surface of bacteria with spindly ‘legs’ and injects its genetic material through a...