Scientists have discovered a new alphavirus in Australian mosquitoes and have provisionally named it the Yada Yada virus. They named it after the 'Yada Yada' catchphrase from the American TV show Seinfeld.
Jana Batovska, who is one of the authors of the paper from the AgriBio Centre for AgriBioscience in Victoria, Australia tweeted saying, “Lastly, yes – we did name the virus after Seinfeld! The rise of metagenomic sequencing has resulted in an explosion of virus discovery, with new viruses being announced every day – this is another one: Yada Yada virus. (also, Seinfeld is awesome)”.
So what is the Yada Yada virus?
When the team of researchers extracted RNA from a large number of mosquitoes in Australia’s Victoria state, they found a new alphavirus, which belonged to a group that includes other alphaviruses such as chikungunya virus and the astern equine encephalitis, reported Indian Express.
According to Indian Express, the virus poses no threat to human beings, because it is a part of a group of viruses that only infect mosquitoes. That doesn’t mean the discovery won’t be useful: “Mosquito-specific viruses can help us understand how viruses evolved and can be useful for vaccine production and diagnostics,” Batovska wrote on Twitter.
What does Yada Yada mean?
'Yada Yada' originated from the classic American TV show Seinfeld. In one episode, which originally aired on April 24, 1997, the character of George Costanza inquires about his girlfriend’s friend, who she tells him has Legionnaire’s disease. In response to his question, “Really? What happened?”, the girlfriend replies, “Oh, yada yada yada, just some bad egg salad…”
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Yada Yada means “boring or empty talk.” It further notes that the phrase is “often used interjectionally, especially in recounting words regarded as too dull or predictable to be worth repeating.”
