Bizarre giant viruses with tubular tentacles and star-like shells discovered in New England forest
By Kiley Price published 1 day ago
Giant viruses are much more diverse in shape and size than scientists previously thought, according to a new study.
Different viruses under a microscope. The left virus is turtle-shaped; the middle and right viruses are shaped like stars.
(Left to right) Scientists discovered these never-before-seen giant viruses that are known as the "turtle," "plumber" and "Christmas star" morphotypes, based on their shapes. (Image credit: Fischer et al. DOI: 10.1101/2023.06.30.546935(CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license))
Giant viruses lurking in the soils of a New England forest sport traits never seen in other viruses of similar heft — from star-like outer shells to bizarre, tubular appendages, according to a preprint study published in bioRxiv.
"What we found is a whole new diversity of shapes that we have never seen before," study co-author Matthias Fischer, a virologist at Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Germany, told Live Science. "I would bet that many of those, if not the majority, are completely new and first sightings of viruses that we have never seen before."
Giant viruses usually range from 0.2 to 1.5 micrometers in size and have complex genomes that can carry up to 2.5 million DNA base pairs, according to the study. That's much larger than most viruses, such as influenza viruses, which range from 0.08 to 0.12 micrometers in diameter. So far, giant viruses have primarily been found to infect single-cell organisms, like amoebas, rather than animals or humans. This category of viruses has been found in ecosystems all around the world, including oceans, lakes in the Arctic and even melting permafrost.
In 2018, a separate team of scientists discovered giant viruses in the soil of Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts using a metagenomic analysis, in which they compared the genetic material found in the soil with sequences already present in global genetic databases. For the new study, researchers instead analyzed soil samples from this same forest using a transmission electron microscope, which involved blasting the soil with beams of electrons in order to see the embedded viruses in stunning detail.
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https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/microbiology/bizarre-giant-viruses-with-tubular-tentacles-and-star-like-shells-discovered-in-new-england-forest