peppers

Pepper viruses populate people poop

sporte | June 4, 2008

Have you ever wondered what kinds of viruses can be found in human waste? Mya Breitbart and team have been sequencing nucleic acids from fecal samples in order to find out. You might expect that we'd find viruses that infect humans or viruses that infect the bacteria in our gut. I wouldn't have expected to learn the result that they found. A large number, 60% of the viral DNA sequences were from unknown viruses. That's not a surprise. The surprise came when they looked at the RNA viruses. Instead, the viral sequences most often came from a plant pathogen called the pepper mild mottle…