HERE’S something to contemplate as you recover from year-end feasting: your lower intestine is packed full of plant viruses, hitching a ride to their next victims.
Microbiologists know little about the viruses that live in the human gut because most viruses from faeces refuse to grow in lab cultures. Indeed, scientists studying the Norwalk virus, a notorious cause of gastroenteritis, had to feed human volunteers faecal extracts from infected patients to grow the virus.
But using the tools of modern genomics, it is now possible to screen faecal samples directly for whatever viral genes they may contain. When Forest Rohwer…
