Nature: Machine Learning Spots Treasure Trove of Elusive Viruses; Possible Application in ME Research

In Summary: They're already looking at viruses in feces to see if healthy people have different viral, ah, "loads" than people with cirrhosis of the liver. Scientists wonder if viruses, either by infecting our bodies or our microbiomes, might contribute to IBD or (ME/)CFS.

Read more here.

 

didn't read but does this square with ron davis not finding viruses?

are any of these phages?

 

Fixed the link!

I should say I don't know much more than what I read in this article.

They talk about one family of viruses that infects bacteria and alters their activity. It sounds like at least some of these viruses might not be bacteriophages because they don't mention these viruses killing the bacteria.

I'm not sure how Ron Davis looked for Viruses, maybe someone else knows? The breakthrough they're touting here mostly has to do with using machine learning to identify new species of virus, the implication I think being that before all we could do is look for viruses that we had already identified. And if we were getting sick from a virus that has infected our fecal microbiome, then my guess is that we wouldn't find that viral DNA in our blood, which I would guess is where Ron Davis looked.