PLANET EARTH
Never-before-seen viruses discovered in the oceans
WORDS SASCHA PARE
Mirusviruses regulate the activity of plankton and contribute to the health of the marine ecosystems
Did you know?
48,500 year-old viruses have been found, frozen in permafrost
Scientists have discovered neverbefore-seen viruses that thrive in sunlit oceans from pole to pole and infect plankton. They dubbed the newfound microbes ‘mirusviruses’, ‘mirus’ meaning ‘strange’ in Latin.
The researchers concluded that mirusviruses belong to a large group of viruses called Duplodnaviria, which includes the herpesviruses that infect animals and humans, based on shared genes that encode the shell, or particle enclosing their DNA. But the strange newfound viruses also share a staggering number of genes with a group of giant viruses, called Varidnaviria.