New paper in Science from Ahmed, James, Guillermo and team!

A new paper from Ahmed Zayed, James Wainaina, and Guillermo Dominguez-Huerta titled “Cryptic and abundant marine viruses at the evolutionary origins of Earth’s RNA virome” has just been published in the journal Science. In this work, Ahmed and colleagues bring forth a previously hidden, global diversity of 5,505 new  RNA viruses ‘species’ (mainly infecting small eukaryotic organisms like diatoms) found throughout the world’s five oceans. Due to the unprecedented numbers of new species found, phylogenetic analysis (via the RdRp gene, a hallmark marker for RNA viruses), combined with network-based clustering revealed that some of these RNA viruses belonged to 2 newly created phyla and 11 classes. The paper and its discovery implications were also discussed via a separate ‘Perspective’ article from Science, as well as being featured in multiple media outlets, including The Scientist, and the official OSU press release team.

Read the full paper here, for free: LINK

Congratulations to the team for this great achievement!