In the Ethel Waters of a Nipponese hot spring , scientists have hear a new class of giant computer virus that sound like the stuff and nonsense of Grecian myths .
The Medusavirus , just like its namesake , is able to twist its hosts into “ Isidor Feinstein Stone . ”After infect its server , a eccentric of amoeba , Acanthamoebacastellanii , the virus makes the organisms form a thick hardened shell , encase it into a state of dormancy . The outer layer of thisunique elephantine virusis also treat in hundreds of spikes with spherical headspring used to protect its genetic material , not dissimilar from the ophidian - covered caput ofMedusaherself .
compose in theJournal of Virology , researchers from the University of Tokyo argue that the strange specimen belongs to a totally Modern taxonomical family of elephantine viruses : Medusaviridae . Giant virusesare a group of , well , orotund virus . Some of them are bigger than distinctive bacteria , but their name also announce their extremely large genome that contain many unparalleled genes not found in other living organisms .
Giant viruses were only really discoveredin the early-2000s . Before this , scientist plainly thought they were bacterium . While they are still only just being understand by skill , they are continually surprising researcher by blurring the boundaries between viral subatomic particle and cellular life .
" The more you begin to know about these giant viruses , you will be awed by their astonishingly bright and complex life - comparable scheme , ” the research worker said in astatement . " And at the closing , we terminate up having fundamental questions such as ' Are viruses alive ? ' , and also a more ambitious and provocative hypothesis such as ' Did these virus evolved from cells ? ' "
The Medusavirus is exceptionally strange , even for a giant virus . The researchers believe it could help shed some light onto how giant virus became snarl with the evolutionary history of eucaryotic electric cell , the cells that make up fungi , plant , and fauna . They find that a number of the Medusavirus ’ genes were in reality inside the genome of the emcee ameba . This could advise that gene transfer occurred between the two a retentive time ago and might have help to shape their evolutionary track .
“ Of naturally , it is indeed very interesting if virus in reality affected the birth of eukaryotes , " added the researchers .
“ Viruses are think to have play an important theatrical role in the development and development of animation . With the uncovering of this Medusavirus , we were able-bodied to observe new traces of how the jumbo viruses got imply in the evolution of ancient eukaryote . ”
[ H / T : survive Science ]
