Forget about Corona: A new and terrifying virus has been discovered in Brazil

The mastering virus is spreading in China, but only recently have researchers from Brazil discovered a new virus that they have never encountered. Now they have to understand what he can do and whether he is endangering us

Forget about Corona: A new and terrifying virus has been discovered in Brazil

While the Corona virus, or as it is now called COVID-19, threatens the population of China and the world at large, scientists have identified a new virus in Brazil that contains genes that have never been documented in any research ever conducted. The virus - called Yaravirus named after Honeysuckle, or Ira, a figure of a water queen in Brazilian mythology - was recovered from Pamola Lake, an artificial lake in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.

According to researchers who discovered the new virus, it constitutes "a new lineage of viruses with a puzzling origin and incomprehensible stages of development." Two of the senior members of the team of researchers - the virologists Bernard La Scola of the University of Ex-Marseille in France, and Joannes S. Abrahu of the Federal University of Brazil Minas Grais - need to know what they are talking about. Two years ago, they took part in discovering a new virus: Tupanvirus, a huge, complex virus found in aquatic habitats that can replicate DNA.

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Before their discovery, it was customary to think that viruses could not do such things when they were considered as non-living beings, and therefore only able to infect their hosts - just like the corona. We now know that viruses are far more complex than previously believed, and in recent years scientists have uncovered other types of viral forms that similarly challenge thinking about how viruses can spread and function.

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The Yaravirus, does not appear to be a giant virus that contains more genes and infects single-celled marine creatures, such as amoebas, but it probably contains a unique genome. "Most known viruses share many traits that eventually led authors to classify them into common evolutionary groups. Contrary to other viruses, the new virus carries an important number of previously undefined genes." In their study, researchers found that more than 90 percent of the genes in the new virus had never been previously described, and were so-called "orphan genes."

Only six of 74 genes showed some similarity to other known genes. Some of the genes are also known to exist in giant viruses - but because Yaravirus is both small in size and genome, it's not a huge virus, Abrahu said. However, it infects amoebas like giant viruses do.

Yaravirus (Photo: Aix Marseille University and Microscopy Center)

Yaravirus (Photo: Aix Marseille University and Microscopy Center, screenshot)

"This is one of the reasons why this new virus is so intriguing and we claim to be challenging the classification of DNA viruses," said Abrahahu. However, such viruses are classified on the basis of their protein shell called capsid. In the case of the Yaravirus, the capsid is unlike any protein previously known. It is unclear when this virus developed and what originated it.

"New viruses similar to Yaravirus will need to be isolated to improve our analysis and try to determine their origin," he said. Although the virus has only been isolated recently, this virus may have been circulating on Earth for ages, said Abrahu. In any case, Yaravirus does not infect human cells.

"If we consider all the viruses now known, we can say that most of them pose no threat to our health," said Abrahu. But that doesn't mean we should ignore them. "Viruses are extremely important for the environment, helping to circulate nutrients or pest control."

The research team hopes to further analyze the virus's properties in an effort to understand how it communicates with other mammals and other potential hosts, and to find out its origin and how it has evolved. And this study shows that "we only know a very small fraction of this variety" of viruses that exist on our planet, Abrahaho said. "There's a lot more to explore."