I am not sure whether everyone shares that enthusiasm about "giant viruses"! 😊
Stuff for next horror movie? What lurks beneath or the invasion of the giant viruses! 😊
Let's hope, they are mostly harmless.
"New images reveal the varied — and sometimes whimsical — shapes of hundreds of potential soil-dwelling giant viruses. One shape is dubbed “haircut” for its fibers that bristle like freshly buzzed hair. “Gorgon” has tubelike appendages snaking from its shell. And flaps poking out of “turtle” resemble the reptile’s head, limbs and tail ...
These and other peculiar-looking shapes “clearly tell us that we’ve underestimated how structurally diverse these viruses are,” ...
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 ... 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. ..."
From the abstract:
"Large DNA viruses of the phylum Nucleocytoviricota infect diverse eukaryotic hosts from protists to humans, with profound consequences for aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. While nucleocytoviruses are known to be highly diverse in metagenomes, knowledge of their capsid structures is restricted to a few characterized representatives. Here, we visualize giant virus-like particles (VLPs, diameter >0.2 µm) directly from the environment using transmission electron microscopy. We found that Harvard Forest soils contain a higher diversity of giant VLP morphotypes than all hitherto isolated giant viruses combined. These included VLPs with icosahedral capsid symmetry, ovoid shapes similar to pandoraviruses, and bacilliform shapes that may represent novel viruses. We discovered giant icosahedral capsids with structural modifications that had not been described before including tubular appendages, modified vertices, tails, and capsids consisting of multiple layers or internal channels. Many giant VLPs were covered with fibers of varying lengths, thicknesses, densities, and terminal structures. These findings imply that giant viruses employ a much wider array of capsid structures and mechanisms to interact with their host cells than is currently known. We also found diverse tailed bacteriophages and filamentous VLPs, as well as ultra-small cells. Our study offers a first glimpse of the vast diversity of unexplored viral structures in soil and reinforces the potential of transmission electron microscopy for fundamental discoveries in environmental microbiology."
In the loamy soil of Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, scientists have uncovered a new world of potential giant viruses (some pictured in these microscope images), many in unusual shapes.
No comments:
Post a Comment