According to a new study, a virus that survives in the human intestine has just been discovered, surprisingly enough for nearly half of the world 's population to find the virus.

  Professor of Bioinformatics, San Diego State University, Robert Edwards is one of the researchers working on the study. "But the mechanism of the virus is unclear," he said, "Scientists want to see if they can improve their health as quickly as possible, or under certain conditions."

  The researchers exposed clues to the virus for the first time after analyzing the DNA in excreta from 12 human subjects. Edwards said they found that all samples had a set of identical viral DNA.

  The researchers then collected samples from people from several different continents and searched for the DNA sequence of the virus in a large database of gene sequences, and found the virus in 75% of human excrement samples. Edwards said, however, that some of these samples come from the same person, and with that in mind, the researchers estimate that the virus is present in nearly half the body.

  But why is such a widespread virus now discovered? One reason, Edward says, is that, in the past, most researchers compared only the newly acquired sample DNA to a known DNA sequence. In the latest study, however, the researchers first compared sample DNA to look for the same gene.

  "We did some different types of comparisons," Edwards Live Science said, "and the results really make us aware of the importance of comparison, because the comparison is very diverse.

  The new virus, known as crAssphage, is a bacteriophage, meaning it infects bacteria. According to the study, crAssphage is likely to infect a common intestinal bacteria called Bacteroides.

  Although the researchers have shown that the virus in the nature of DNA, but they can not copy the virus in the laboratory, did not get its photos.

  "We knew it was there, but we could not capture it completely," Edward said.

  Edwards said the researchers believe that the virus may be involved in controlling the number of Bacteroides in the gut.

  "This new finding adds another dimension to helping researchers understand how gut microbes affect human health," said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a representative of the American Society for Infectious Diseases. He did not participate in the study. More research is needed to understand how the virus interacts with bacteria in the intestine, and how it might affect health, he said. Adela said that the discovery of this bacteriophage will open up a large number of research methods.

  Adala said that the widespread existence of this virus does not mean it is benign. "The fact that it exists on so many people means that whatever it is doing does not lead to something rare, but it can play a role in many epidemics that affect humans." For example, like obesity, cancer.

The study was published in Nature Communications.

TAG: Chemical Reagent, Biomedical