Planet of Viruses

Prolific science writer Carl Zimmer has a new book out, A Planet of Viruses, from University of Chicago Press. Part of a series sponsored by the Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) to help support educational outreach to students, the book packs into 109 pages just about everything you’ve always wanted to know–and a lot you’ll probably wish you didn’t know–about the viruses that have caused humanity so much grief throughout history.

Here follows a brief review of the book’s contents, and a short Q&A with the author.

Zimmer, who better than anyone else, weaves the history of science into every topic he tackles, takes a three part approach to the subject. Part One (Old Companions), conducts the reader on a brief history of viruses, how they were first reported, and how scientists began to develop methods to fight them, with three key players familiar to everyone: the Rhinovirus (which causes the common cold), the Influenza Virus (which causes the flu) and the Human Papillomavirus (which causes multiple diseases, including cervical cancer in women).

But viruses also play a very constructive role in life, and Part Two (Everywhere in All Things) examines bacteriophages–viruses that destroy bacteria; marine phages, which scientists believe have the potential to help develop new vaccines; and our own inner parasites, endogenous retro viruses, which are part of our evolutionary heritage.

For a sobering conclusion to the book, in Part Three (The Viral Future), Zimmer discusses the viruses that will continue to threaten humanity the most: HIV, West Nile Virus, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and Ebola (which presents in a frightening way like Edgar Allan Poe’s Red Death).

The author was kind enough to take some time from a daunting schedule of presentations and research to do a little Q&A.

Progressive Download (PD): Could you tell me a little about how you came to write this book. Were each of the chapters written separately for the SEPA’s project?

Carl Zimmer (CZ): I was invited to work on a SEPA project on viruses, which would explore new ways to get people–including high school students–interested in the science of viruses. We did all sorts of things, from radio programs to comic books. My main involvement was picking out a dozen viruses to write about; I chose each one to illuminate some important concept about viruses, such as how they infect hosts, or how they evolve to jump from one host species to another.

PD: Which chapter, or which virus, surprised you the most in the research and the writing?

CZ: I was most surprised by the last chapter in which I write about a weird bunch of viruses that are 100 times bigger than viruses were supposed to be. It’s amazing that these so-called “giant viruses” were hiding in plain sight for decades or perhaps centuries–because people thought they were bacteria. Now they turn out to be abundant and profoundly different than other forms of life. They may even represent an entirely new branch on the tree of life.

PD: I was struck by a point in chapter 1 on the rhinovirus and the inefficacy of most medications. My wife, an M.D. and researcher, would never let me give our kids even cough syrup when they would get a cold or headache–and she made the same point. They don’t work–and they may even make it worse.

CZ: It’s remarkable that we have yet to have a proven treatment for a disease as seemingly simple as the cold. We want a treatment so badly that we’ll even use medicines that don’t actually work.

PD: On phages as potential treatments (Enemy of Our Enemy). Do you know if there are there companies now that are working on development–or is it too early to predict what could be used?

CZ: I’ve co-blogged with Tim Lu of MIT about phage therapy at the University of Chicago blog. Things are just starting to take hold in phage therapy–but a lot of people are looking for non-medical treatments for now, because the regulatory process is so murky. But all the research suggests that phages could complement, or perhaps even replace, many antibiotics.

PD: Identifying new threats. I’m assuming that with the speed of whole genome sequencing continuing to accelerate, this will also be a major tool in helping scientists identify new viruses as soon as they sicken or kill someone in a ‘new’ way (i.e., presenting new symptoms).

CZ: Virus hunters are adopting the newest DNA-sequencing technology as soon as it becomes practical. These devices are letting them fish out tiny wisps of DNA from host tissues and identify viruses that we’ve never seen before.

PD: It seems likely, as you suggest, that viruses played a key role in the origin of life. It seems ironic today that life from non-life seems to be such a major “gap” to fill in. [In the middle ages, for example, it was taken for granted that living things could spontaneously generate from nonliving matter.] And perhaps viruses are a key to understanding what ultimately is a very fine transition between the two. Is that your view?

CZ: We still don’t have a definition of life–or, better still, a theory of life. But we won’t find either if we get too stuck on false dichotomies. Viruses have been declared not alive, and yet some giant viruses straddle the boundary. They aren’t just packets of genes. Their shells stay intact once they invade a host, they suck in molecules, and they spit out DNA and proteins–using enzymes once believed only to be carried by “true” life forms. That’s pretty close to being alive, I think.

PD: The way viruses have survived and evolved across species down through the eons really underscores the stochastic processes at the heart of evolution. With creationists making a concerted effort to attack public science education, it seems this book in particular, more than even your earlier book on evolution, is a superb resource for teachers and interested science readers who want to be able to deflate the rhetoric of anti-evolutionists.

CZ: Thanks! Like all other aspects of life, viruses only make sense in the light of evolution. That doesn’t mean we know all there is to know about viruses. But the theory of evolution has been crucial for much of what we know already–and what we will learn in the future.