Giant viruses may try out all sorts of funky lewks.
These and other peculiar-looking shapes “clearly tell us that we’ve underestimated how structurally diverse these viruses are,” says Fischer, of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany.
Since the discovery of the first giant virus in 2003, scientists collecting genetic material from the environment have uncovered a wide world of giant viruses (SN: 3/21/18). These viruses are roughly 10 to 50 times the diameter of viruses that cause the common cold. The genetic data suggest that giant viruses are diverse, widespread and abundant.
But genetics can’t tell us everything about a virus’s biology, says Steven Wilhelm, a microbiologist at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “We don’t know what we’re looking at, who it infects or what it could possibly be doing.”
2023-08-04 06:00:00
Article from www.sciencenews.org