Can a virus save a forest?

Research Professor Eeva Vainio of the Natural Resources Institute Finland doesn’t forage for porcini — she’s after root-rot fungi and honey fungus, wood-decay species that cost Finnish forestry tens of millions of euros every year.

Vainio’s real interest, however, lies inside the fungi themselves. Wild fungi harbour a rich variety of specialised viruses, and nearly every species studied so far has turned out to carry them. Vainio hopes these viruses can one day be used to curb the spread of wood-decay fungi.

Finding viruses in fungi is like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle. The RNA in a fungal cell is broken into millions of tiny fragments, and a supercomputer then tries to reconstruct intact sequences — a single analysis requires trillions of calculations. The technique has transformed the field: Vainio’s team has discovered dozens of viruses entirely unknown to science.

The goal is not to wipe out decay fungi altogether but to limit their spread. The current prevalence of root rot is largely a consequence of human activity: stumps left behind by summer felling give the fungus an ideal route into the seedlings of commercial forests. In natural forests, the problem does not exist on the same scale.

A virus that could prevent a disease pocket from spreading or producing spores would be a natural, species-specific control measure — less an intervention in nature than a step towards restoring a more natural balance.

Fungal viruses and a 100-million-piece jigsaw puzzle

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Can a virus save a forest?

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