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Scientists are listening in on the ways viruses communicate and cooperate. Decoding what the microbes are saying could be a boon to human health....
It wasn’t until 1999 that anyone took any notice of what cooperation achieved for the viruses themselves. That year, evolutionary biologists Paul Turner, now at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Lin Chao, now at the University of California, San Diego, showed that phages play their own version of the prisoner’s dilemma strategy game, working in partnership under certain circumstances and acting in their own self-interests in others. Geneticist Rotem Sorek could see that his bacteria were sick — so far, so good. He had deliberately infected them with a virus to test whether each ailing microbe soldiered on alone or communicated with its allies to fight the attack.
Virologists have long studied their subjects in isolation, targeting cells with just a single viral particle. But it’s become increasingly clear that many viruses cooperate, teaming up to co-infect hosts and break down antiviral immune defences....
