IT'S viruses against bacteria in the struggle to preserve the Red Sea's renowned coral reefs.
The corals have been fighting off bacteria that bleach and kill them. This "white plague", caused by Thalassomonas loyana, infects 9 per cent of Favia favus coral. Corals next to infected ones have a 61 per cent chance of catching the disease. Some, however, can resist it.
Eugene Rosenberg of Tel Aviv University in Israel and his group have now found their secret: BA3, a virus that kills T. loyana. To test its usefulness, they inoculated corals living next to infected ones with BA3. The odds of infection dropped to 5 per cent. Doing the same to infected corals stopped the disease in its tracks.
Rosenberg is now in talks with the Israeli government to treat large parts of the Gulf of Aqaba with BA3 by artificially introducing the virus to reefs. The virus exists naturally in the Red Sea and is only known to attack T. loyana, so they think it's unlikely to have adverse effects. He presented his findings at the American Society for Microbiology's general meeting in San Francisco last month.
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