Enlarge / Electron micrograph of herpesviruses. (credit: Callista Images )

Double-stranded DNA viruses come in two main flavors, classified by their shapes. One contains large and giant DNA viruses that attack complex cells but also includes some viruses that are much smaller and infect bacteria. These viruses are shaped like soccer balls. The other flavor has tails and primarily infects bacteria and archaea but also contains the herpesvirus family, which infects animals.

The disparate properties of these viruses have raised some questions that have been plaguing virologists: Where did herpesviruses come from? And how are the large and giant DNA viruses related to the smaller viruses within their realm?

Tara Oceans is “an international, multidisciplinary project to assess the complexity of ocean life across comprehensive taxonomic and spatial scales.” Researchers with the project sail around all five oceans and two seas (the Red and the Mediterranean), sampling plankton to try to understand the ocean ecosystem. In new work reported in Nature, a team pulled plankton from the sunlit oceans (it’s a technical term: only down to 200 meters below the surface, where light penetrates and photosynthesis happens). They surveyed all the planktonic DNA viruses by comparing a single hallmark gene among them.

Enlarge / Runner in Shanghai, China. (credit: Getty| Avalon )

In the early morning of August 16, a 41-year-old man in China's southwest-central municipality of Chongqing got up and went for a jog along a lake in a local outdoor park—something that should have been a pleasant, if not unremarkable, outing. But what really happened during that 35-minute jaunt has now sparked international alarm and debate, with some scientists doubtful of China's startling account.

According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the unmasked man infected 33 unmasked park visitors and two unmasked park workers with the coronavirus omicron subvariant BA.2.76 during his short run. The agency claimed transmission occurred in fleeting outdoor encounters as he trotted past people on a four-meter-wide foot path. Many others were infected without any close encounter. Twenty of the 33 infected park goers became infected by simply visiting outdoor areas of the park the jogger had previously passed through, including an entrance gate. The two infected workers, meanwhile, quickly passed the infection on to four other colleagues, bringing the jogger's park outbreak total to 39.

To support these unusual conclusions, the CCDC cited case interviews, park surveillance footage, and SARS-CoV-2 genetic data, which reportedly linked the cases but is notably absent from the report.

Preparing for the next pandemic at Ars Frontiers. Click here for transcript . (video link)

Though the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over, fatigue from the global public health emergency has surged to levels only an omicron subvariant could rival. We're all eager to move on. But for scientists and public health experts, that means preparing for the next inevitable pandemic and dealing with the aftermath of this one.

Ahead of Ars Frontiers, I connected with virologist Angela Rasmussen to talk about pandemic preparedness: what went well in this pandemic, what didn't, what we learned—and what lessons we already seem to be ignoring.