Town's Sewage Plant Hosts Giant Viruses!

Sewage from the Austrian town Klosterneuburg, where Franz Kafka died, is fueling a scientific controversy. I'm not sure how excited to get over the giant viruses found there and Franz Kafka is probably not a topic for a sewer blog. But with our sewer plant running smoothly, and still no sign of hooking my house up which will yield a bounty of photos and descriptions, I had to go somewhere. 

Kafka did have tuberculosis and who knows, if the sewer in that town was operational then (1924), what could have happened in the mixing of multi-viral and bacterial components is unknowable. It is an interesting thought anyway, if one doesn't linger on it beyond three seconds.

All of the excitement is about a genome that looks like it could have descended from some cell-like virus - some in-between state between cells and viruses, which is a big deal in the scientific world. Now, as all of you might recall, viruses have few genes, some with as little as two. E-coli, a single-cell bacteria found at sewage plants, can have 4,400 genes and comes in many types, some, when internalized, can lead to death (Kafka died of starvation however). These giant viruses can hold more than 2,500 genes!

If you want to read about this, you can go to this link here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/giant-viruses-found-austrian-sewage-fuel-debate-over-potential-fourth-domain-life
There are some lovely virus renderings on this page to illustrate scale.

I did go to the Kafka bookstore while in Prague a couple of years back, the city where Kafka was born, the bookstore being very near to his birthplace (sign translation - Kafka Bookstore).

And while I did not get the chance to visit the Prague sewer system, it is quite old and you can read about it here:

http://www.pvs.cz/en/history/history-of-the-sewer-systems/

You can see inside here:

prague sewers

Come to think about it now, this odd nexus of Kafka and giant sewer viruses (I'll have to relate what was said about viruses and our sewer some years back to complete this picture I guess), if there was ever an author living or dead that could have summarized the hideous Los Osos sewer war in a deep and meaningful way, Franz Kafka would be my pick. Please read The Metamorphosis and The Castle. Or if you prefer, a Cliff's Notes assessment,

"No matter how hard Kafka's heroes strive to come to terms with the universe, they are hopelessly caught, not only in a mechanism of their own contriving, but also in a network of accidents and incidents, the least of which may lead to the gravest consequences."

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/the-trial/critical-essays/kafka-and-existentialism