Skip to main content

Home/ Peppers_Biology/ Group items tagged giant virus

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Lottie Peppers

Giant, ancient viruses are thawing out in Siberia - and they're changing everything we ... - 0 views

  •  
    Last month, researchers announced they were studying a 30,000-year-old giant virus called Mollivirus sibericum that they found in melted Siberian permafrost. The virus was functional and able to infect amoeba. This isn't the first time researchers have found big viruses that have challenged what we thought we knew about the tiny invaders. Mimivirus, discovered in 2003, has 1,200 genes and is twice the width of traditional viruses.
Lottie Peppers

Giant Virus Resurrected from Permafrost After 30,000 Years - Yahoo News - 0 views

  •  
    In recent years, Claverie and his colleagues have discovered a host of giant viruses, which are as big as bacteria but lack characteristic cellular machinery and metabolism of those microorganisms. At least one family of these viruses likely evolved from single-celled parasites after losing essential genes, although the origins of other giant viruses remain a mystery, Claverie said.
Lottie Peppers

Mimivirus | Learn Science at Scitable - 0 views

  •  
    Questions about the nature of viruses remain quite vexing. Recent studies of the giant Mimivirus illustrate this point. Its large size and correspondingly large genome test our general ideas of viruses as small, simple entities. The existence of genes associated with translation, metabolism, DNA repair, and protein folding raises questions about the evolutionary history of viruses. Further studies of this virus, and the search for other giant viruses, may shed light on these issues.
1 - 3 of 3
Showing 20 items per page