currentsinbiology:

Do you speak virus? Phages caught sending chemical messages

Viruses sense chemical signals left behind by their forebears so they can decide whether to kill or just to infect their hosts.

The discovery — in viruses that attack Bacillus
bacteria — marks the first time that any type of viral communication
system has ever been found. But researchers say that many other viruses
could communicate with each other through their own molecular languages —
perhaps even viruses that are responsible for human diseases. If that
is the case, scientists might have found a new way to disrupt viral
attacks.

The secret viral code was spotted by a
team led by Rotem Sorek, a microbial geneticist at the Weizmann
Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Their findings are published in
Nature on 18 January¹.

Erez, Z. et al. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature21049 (2017).

Viruses
called phages hijack bacteria and use them to produce more copies of
themselves. Now researchers have found they can also communicate.
Animated Healthcare Ltd./SPL