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Scientists Discover Rare Giant Viruses Lurking In Harvard Forest Soil (sciencealert.com)
MinutePhrase shares an article from ScienceAlert:
There's a forest in Massachusetts that for nearly 30 years has hosted the world's longest running soil-warming experiment, measuring how hotter temperatures impact the tiny life-forms that live in the dirt... "Our goal was to isolate bacteria directly from the environment to understand how microbial communities are changing in response to soil warming," says biologist Jeff Blanchard from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass)... In this oversized outdoor research laboratory, scientists have made an unexpected discovery, finding 16 rare 'giant' viruses that are completely new to science...
These giant viruses were only discovered this century, and up until now they've usually been found in aquatic habitats. For that reason alone the Harvard Forest discovery is remarkable, as this represents the first time giant viruses have been discovered in a terrestrial ecosystem, and all from a single clump of dirt... "We recovered 16 distinct giant virus genomes in this study," says one of the team, bioinformaticist Frederik Schulz from the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute," but we are merely scratching the surface. If we sample more at the same site this number would easily double, triple, or even quadruple."
These giant viruses were only discovered this century, and up until now they've usually been found in aquatic habitats. For that reason alone the Harvard Forest discovery is remarkable, as this represents the first time giant viruses have been discovered in a terrestrial ecosystem, and all from a single clump of dirt... "We recovered 16 distinct giant virus genomes in this study," says one of the team, bioinformaticist Frederik Schulz from the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute," but we are merely scratching the surface. If we sample more at the same site this number would easily double, triple, or even quadruple."
For those of you normals who also don't know how virus classification works a "giant virus" is this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... . Basically they're large in size as far as virus' go which is still not very giant. This strikes me as one of those things that make sense when it's explained but why on Earth would a microscopic organism ever be described as giant?
Anyways, nice summary slashdot.
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Here's an article about giant viruses. The short answer is, "there's a lot we don't know and modern technology is giving us a ton of new techniques for seeing things."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."