Beetle droppings may have ferried stolen virus genes between yeasts for 15 million years

Some partnerships are glamorous. This one runs through a beetle's gut. University at Buffalo scientists studying Scheffersomyces yeasts — microbes that live on rotting wood — found a cluster of four genes, which they named STORM, that began life inside an ancient virus and has persisted in yeast genomes for at least 15 million years. The cluster has jumped between yeast species at least three times, and the likely courier is the beetles that eat the wood and the yeasts alike, carrying cells from tree to tree. Published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the study shows evolution recycling a virus's toolkit into yeast DNA — at seven times the usual evolutionary speed — with insects as the unwitting postal service.