[Coral-List] New paper on viruses and white plague disease in M. annularis

[Rebecca Vega Thurber]

Dear Coral listers,

 We have recently had published a manuscript that may be of interest to
many of you.

In short, we found strong evidence that a novel group of viruses is
correlated with a white plague disease outbreak that occurred in 2010 in
St. Thomas, USVI. To come to this conclusion we statistically compared 24
individual viral metagenomes from white plague infected, bleached, and
healthy corals. In addition, we examined tissues from all health states
using electron microscopy. To our knowledge this is the first evidence that
viruses maybe involved in this pervasive coral disease.

Soffer, N., Brandt, M. E., Correa, A. M., Smith, T. B., & Vega Thurber, R.
(2013). Potential role of viruses in white plague coral disease. *The ISME
journal*.
http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2013137a.html

-- 
Dr. Rebecca Vega Thurber
Assistant Professor of Microbiology
Oregon State University
454 Nash Hall
Corvallis OR  97331-3804, U.S.A
541-737-1851 (office) 541-737-0496 (FAX)
rvegathurber at gmail.com;Rebecca.Vega-Thurber at oregonstate.edu<Rebecca.Vega.Thurber at oregonstate.edu>