Question:
Herpes Virus Killing Coral Reefs
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 20 June 2007 09:16 am ET

NEW YORK—Corals get cold sores too. Only, for corals, a herpes virus infection isn’t just annoying. It can be lethal, and it and other diseases are possibly a big factor in the deaths of coral reefs that humans are causing throughout the world’s oceans, new research shows.

Scientists have known for years that humans are killing corals indirectly and directly through global warming, overfishing and pollution. Many reefs off populous coasts have been decimated, while those near uninhabited areas are often thriving.

“For some reason, when you put people next to reefs, they die,” said microbiologist Forest Rohwer of San Diego State University at a recent symposium at the American Museum of Natural History here.
A 2004 study found that 70 percent of the world’s reefs had been destroyed or were threatened by global warming and other human activities.

But just how these problems translate into a death sentence for corals has been difficult to work out.

Millions of microbes

Corals reefs are some of the most stunningly diverse habitats on the planet. They are home to thousands of species at all levels of the food chain: invertebrates such as sponges and starfish, small fish such as angelfish and clown fish, big fish such as parrot fish, barracuda, groupers and snappers,and even sharks.

“These are basically the most beautiful thing on the planet,” Rohwer said.

But the most amazing variety, he said, is actually found in the realm we can’t see: “We know [from DNA sequencing] that the most diverse things on a coral reef are actually the microbial community.”

There are about 10 million bacteria and 1 billion archaea on every square centimeter of coral, and two neighboring corals can have completely different microbes living on their surfaces.

The reefs are also constantly interacting with the water surrounding them—in only a milliliter of ocean water (about one-fifth of a teaspoon) there are about one million bacteria and 10 million viruses.

Organic carbon, a food source for the microbes, is produced by algae around the reef, but is usually gobbled up by small fishes, which are eaten by big fishes, which in turn are eaten by sharks, so very little of the carbon is left in the water column to feed the microbes.

“This allows the coral to actually control their microbial community by providing the food source to them through their mucous,” Rohwer explained.

Normally, corals use their cilia (tiny finger-like structures) to pass the bacteria along and push them off in balls of mucous that come off the corals and burst, Rohwer said.

But when humans come into the picture, microbes get the upper hand.

A microbial explosion

When humans overfish a reef, there’s nothing left to eat the food produced by the algae, so all that carbon builds up in the water column and feeds the microbes, sort of like "MicrobeGro" fertilizer, building up their numbers and overwhelming the coral.

“The coral is actually losing control of its microbial community,” Rohwer said.

Even though these microbes normally live in a harmonious balance with the coral, they are still potential pathogens.

Rohwer and his colleagues tested their idea by putting pieces of Panamanian corals in cups with seawater, and adding different “treatments” to each cup, and essentially “just look[ing] for the coral to die,” Rohwer said.

Organic carbon was indeed the biggest coral killer.

Herpes outbreak

Rebecca Thurber, one of Rohwer’s postdoctoral researchers, also took pieces of coral and changed conditions such as nutrients, temperature and water pH, then cut up the coral and sequenced the DNA of the microbes that grew on their surface.

And what was the number one disease affecting the corals? Herpes viruses.

“They dominate almost all the viruses that are present,” Thurber told LiveScience.

Herpes viruses are naturally found in many different animals (95 percent of humans carry some kind of herpes virus).

“Everybody in this room has at least a couple herpes viruses running around,” Rohwer said at the symposium, causing some in the audience to chuckle. “And when you get stressed, or immuno-compromised, they’re going to start hopping out and giving you little cold sores or other wounds that we won’t talk about.”

“That seems to be what’s going on in the corals too,” he added.

Rohwer and Therber’s findings suggest that these disease outbreaks are just one of the many ways human activity is killing off corals.

“They’re screwed no matter what we do to them,” Rohwer said.

http://www.livescience.com/environme...es_corals.html

Answer:
oh goodies...more wonderful, grand news about herpes (sarcasm thick here). That is so scary.....years down the road, who knows what the ramifications of all this reef life/coral dying away will be.

Our poor poor environment....ugh...don't even get me started on that.

Answer:
Hang on a minute, is this a wind-up????!!!! Although in my defence I've just finished reading posts by lintus in another thread so I'm a bit brain-dead :confused:.

Coral reefs have herpes?? And what else? Arthritis, asthma, PMT???!!! It sounds odd to say the least. I swear to god I’ve never kissed - or in deed done any jiggy jiggyness - with a coral reef in my life!!!!

I clicked on one of the links and it says; “The herpes family of viruses can have a surprising upside--it can protect against the bubonic plague“. Which I have to say did cheer me up…I’ll definitely stress that as a ‘plus’ when I’m giving ‘the talk’ :???:.

And having clicked on another link it says.. .“Research into whether a similar mechanism applies to humans and other mammalian hosts should be conducted, said viral immunologist Skip Virgin at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis“.

SKIP VIRGIN???????

I rest my case!!!!!!! :-D

Going for a much needed lie down.......

Answer:
Yea I posted that article because it was interesting but it wasn't very thorough and it just left me with more questions... plus a lot of it didn't make much sense. The article mentioned "cold sores" but did they really mean HSV1? If so, I didn't think HSV1 would survive in a coral reef environment. Not a very factual article but slightly entertaining.

Answer:
do other animals carry it.. like could u give it to ur dog who then pass it on to your son or something???? thats be crazy, i was having this conversation with someone i know who has type one and also has a minor in epidemiology and she was just as curious as me! anyone know????

Answer:
Real quick.....not much info.....but I read somewhere yesterday that there is a feline (cat) herpes out there. I have no idea whether it's the same strain that we get. I'll try to research and get back to you.

Answer:
feline herpes is a respiratory disorder. you cannot get it from a cat. I think it is rhinotracheitis.

most diseases do not cross species. there are numerous strands of herpes viruses however the one we suffer from is herpes simplex. (hsv 1 and hsv 2)

If you are looking for an upside to having this it can make you immune to the plague and a form of food poisoning called listeria.

chicken pox is herpes zoster and this is the cause of shingles. there is also the one that causes mononeucleosis and epstein barr disease (chronic fatigue syndrome.)

Answer:
"If you are looking for an upside to having this it can make you immune to the plague and a form of food poisoning called listeria. "

That was good - it made me laugh. No, I wasn't seriously looking for an upside to having this! :-D


"there is also the one that causes mononeucleosis and epstein barr disease (chronic fatigue syndrome.)" I don't understand the parentheses - obviously neither mononeucleosis nor epstein barr disease are the same as chronic fatigue syndrome, otherwise they might be called...well...chronic fatigue syndrome. Maybe it was implying that they both, or just the latter, causes CFS. Well this MIGHT be true, in that there may be a correlation. But a direct cause for CFS has yet to be found. In fact, it can only be diagnosed by eliminating all other differential diagnoses.