{"id":22474,"date":"2025-02-19T13:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T14:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22474"},"modified":"2025-02-19T14:27:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T14:27:20","slug":"trillions-of-viruses-live-in-your-body-a-i-is-trying-to-find-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22474","title":{"rendered":"Trillions of Viruses Live in Your Body. A.I. Is Trying to Find Them."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Human Virome Program will analyze samples from thousands of volunteers in an effort to understand how viruses affect health.<\/p>\n

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The viruses we know best are the ones that make us sick \u2014 the influenza viruses that send us to bed and the smallpox viruses that may send us to the grave.<\/p>\n

But healthy people are rife with viruses that don\u2019t make us ill. Scientists estimate that tens of trillions of viruses live inside of us, though they\u2019ve identified just a fraction of them. A vast majority are benign, and some may even be beneficial. We don\u2019t know for sure, because most of the so-called human virome remains a mystery.<\/p>\n

This year, five universities are teaming up for an unprecedented hunt to identify these viruses. They will gather saliva, stool, blood, milk and other samples from thousands of volunteers. The five-year effort, called the Human Virome Program<\/a> and supported by $171 million in federal funding, will inspect the samples with artificial intelligence systems, hoping to learn about how the human virome influences our health.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it will swamp the data that we\u2019ve had up until now,\u201d said Frederic Bushman, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the program\u2019s leaders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The first hints<\/a> of the human virome emerged over a century ago. Analyzing stool samples, scientists discovered viruses known as phages that could infect bacteria inside the gut. Phages also turned up in the mouth, lungs and skin.<\/p>\n

Scientists later found viruses<\/a> that infected our own cells without causing any major symptoms. A vast majority<\/a> of the world\u2019s population gets infected with cytomegaloviruses, for example, which can colonize just about every organ.<\/p>\n

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The Human Virome Program will analyze samples from thousands of volunteers in an effort to understand how viruses affect health.The viruses we know best are the ones that make us sick \u2014 the influenza viruses that send us to bed and the smallpox viruses that may send us to the grave.But healthy people are rife with viruses that don\u2019t make us ill. Scientists estimate that tens of trillions of viruses live inside of us, though they\u2019ve identified just a fraction of them. A vast majority are benign, and some may even be beneficial. We don\u2019t know for sure, because most of the so-called human virome remains a mystery.This year, five universities are teaming up for an unprecedented hunt to identify these viruses. They will gather saliva, stool, blood, milk and other samples from thousands of volunteers. The five-year effort, called the Human Virome Program and supported by $171 million in federal funding, will inspect the samples with artificial intelligence systems, hoping to learn about how the human virome influences our health.\u201cI think it will swamp the data that we\u2019ve had up until now,\u201d said Frederic Bushman, a microbiologist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the program\u2019s leaders.The first hints of the human virome emerged over a century ago. Analyzing stool samples, scientists discovered viruses known as phages that could infect bacteria inside the gut. Phages also turned up in the mouth, lungs and skin.Scientists later found viruses that infected our own cells without causing any major symptoms. A vast majority of the world\u2019s population gets infected with cytomegaloviruses, for example, which can colonize just about every organ.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22476,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22474"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22477,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22474\/revisions\/22477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}