Mollivirus

Mollivirus sibericum is a giant virus discovered in 2015 by French researchers Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie in a 30,000-year-old sample of Siberian permafrost, where the team had previously found the unrelated giant virus Pithovirus sibericum. Mollivirus sibericum is a spherical DNA virus with a diameter of 500–600 nanometers (0.5–0.6 μm).[1][2]

Mollivirus
Virus classification
Group:
Group I (dsDNA)
Order:
Unassigned
Family:
Unassigned
Genus:
Mollivirus
Species

Mollivirus sibericum is the fourth ancient virus that scientists have found frozen in permafrost since 2003.[3]

Description

Mollivirus sibericum is an approximately spherical virion 0.6 μm in diameter. It encloses a 651 kb GC-rich genome encoding 523 proteins, of which 64% are ORFs.[1][4] The host's ribosomal proteins are packaged in the virion.[1]

See also

References
  1. Legendre, Matthieu; Lartigue, Audrey; Bertaux, Lionel; Jeudy, Sandra; Bartoli, Julia; Lescot, Magali; Alempic, Jean-Marie; Ramus, Claire; Bruley, Christophe; Labadie, Karine; Shmakova, Lyubov; Rivkina, Elizaveta; Couté, Yohann; Abergel, Chantal; Claverie, Jean-Michel (8 September 2015). "In-depth study of, a new 30,000-y-old giant virus infecting". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112: E5327–E5335. doi:10.1073/pnas.1510795112. PMC 4586845. PMID 26351664.
  2. Christensen, Jen (11 September 2015). "Ancient squirrel's nest leads to discovery of giant virus". CNN. Retrieved 13 September 2015.
  3. Feltman, Rachel A giant ancient virus was just uncovered in melting ice — and it won't be the last Washington Post. December 14, 2015
  4. Strom, Marcus Prehistoric 'Frankenvirus' Mollivirus sibericum uncovered in Siberian permafrost Sydney Morning Herald. December 14, 2014
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.