Spore producing structures of the fungus Bd. Credit: Mark Yacoub/UCR
Key points:
- Batrachochytrium dendrobatitidis (Bd), a fungus that damages the skin of amphibians until it eventually causes heart failure, has contributed to the decline of over 500 amphibian species and 90 possible extinctions.
- Researchers have now identified the virus that infects specific Bd fungus strains.
- The team hopes to engineer the virus to control Bd and protect amphibians from the fungal pandemic.
The fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatitidis (Bd), damages the skin of frogs and toads until it eventually causes heart failure. A new study, published in Current Biology, details the discovery of a virus that infects Bd and gives perspective on how the virus may be engineered to control Bd.
Researchers employed DNA sequencing technology to determine how strains of fungus differ across geographical locations including Africa, Brazil, and the U.S. During their analysis, they found additional sequences that did not match the DNA of the fungus, indicating the presence of a viral genome.
This unexpected result helped them determine that a virus was essentially trapped in the Bd fungal genome, which not only improves their understanding of how fungal pathogens rise and spread, but also provides hope for ending the devastating global impact of the fungal disease.
Looking ahead, the team hopes to discover insights into the way the virus operates and why it infects only certain strains. They plan to clone the virus and examine whether a manually infected strain of Bd produces fewer spores. Additionally, they are investigating how to modify the virus to protect amphibians from Bd infection.
“We don’t know how the virus infects the fungus, how it gets into the cells,” explained study author Mark Yacoub of University of California – Riverside. “If we’re going to engineer the virus to help amphibians, we need answers to questions like these.”
Efforts to protect amphibians from Bd are critically important because they help to maintain ecosystems by controlling insects, crop pests, and mosquitoes. Additionally, amphibian species may act as a harbinger of climate change.
“As temperatures get warmer, UV light gets stronger, and water quality gets worse, frogs respond to that,” said Yacoub. “If they get wiped out, we lose an important environmental signal.”