A great piece of work by the Ferrandon lab to describe the huge importance of Nora virus in #Drosophila stocks. Gut disruption creates susceptibility to coinfection by microbes. Major effects on lifespan, infection, etc... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Much needed fly #virus PSA to boot. 1/2 - ThreadSky

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hansonmark.bsky.social • 11 days ago

A great piece of work by the Ferrandon lab to describe the huge importance of Nora virus in #Drosophila stocks. Gut disruption creates susceptibility to coinfection by microbes. Major effects on lifespan, infection, etc...
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.30.635658v2

Much needed fly #virus PSA to boot.

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hansonmark.bsky.social•11 days ago

In my own hands Nora virus was so problematic we dedicated Fig1 to explaining how it screwed up 2.5 years of aging work. IMO Nora virus contamination contributes an extra 10-15% mortality to any septic infection (ballpark, not properly measured).
https://journals.biologists.com/dmm/article/16/4/dmm049965/307300/Antimicrobial-peptides-do-not-directly-contribute
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ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social•11 days ago

Yeah. One more confounding g factor in many experiments. Any recommendation on how one can clean stocks from the virus?

hansonmark.bsky.social•11 days ago

Bleaching embryos works pretty well for Nora. I know a lab that does 2 rounds to fully clear. Think this paper also has notes on adventures in clearing it.

In my experience 1 bleaching worked for >1 year, but stocks did become reinfected some point. Couldn't say if that was a breakout or recontam..

ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social•11 days ago

Ok. So it remains extracellular during oogenesis and bleaching is good enough. So standard axenic protocol.

hansonmark.bsky.social•11 days ago

Aye. But maybe the one caution of it all is just how prevalent it is. We received stocks from other labs, Bloomington, our own lab's library, that were all infected. Something like 22/45 stocks we checked had positive CTs...

Definitely worth a screen. Annoyingly has to be by RT-PCR.

ribeirocarlitos.bsky.social•11 days ago

Yeah. I think we also saw it in some of the sequencing we have done. There were many reads from viruses in some runs we did with Bart.

profken.bsky.social•11 days ago

This looks relevant to your work @moriacc.bsky.social

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