Viruses

It's Tuesday now, right?
I've entered a summer vacation mode, so I'm getting mixed up with days. Though I still have two more exams, hoping they'd let in into a university this time.
Fourth time's the charm, right...?

Anyway. This morning I was like "Oh, man, it's Tuesday again, I've just been studying for the past week, I have no idea what to write about."
Then this month's Tiede dropped in through my mail box, and it told me something weird.

Giant viruses.

Ok, so normal viruses are usually something in between 20-300 nm (=1x10^-6 mm) and have less than a dozen genes, because they don't really need more. Literally all they are is a protein coat with some nucleic acid inside.

Kind of about the topic, I could've included this in last week's questions: how do you kill a virus? Or is it just a figure of speech? Because viruses aren't actually ever alive, so technically killing a virus is killing something that was never alive, which I'm not entirely sure is possible.

Anyway.

Sometime in the 1990's e research group found a new virus from inside an amoeba. They first thought it was a bacteria, because it was the size of a bacteria, but DNA analysis showed it was a virus. A huge virus.
At first they didn't believe it. Then they started believing it, but it took years before anyone else believed them.
And I can't blame them, really. The new virus was 750 nm in size and had 900 genes. That's four times the size and 90 times the genetic material as a normal virus.
What?

Then they found another one, also from an amoeba. And another one. And another. Each bigger than the last. It turns out there are viruses bigger than some bacteria. And some of their genes are ones that had never been seen before anywhere in anything.
They're actually thinking that maybe the original nuclei in cells were huge viruses that just fused into an arch bacteria and started working together or something. Maybe. The mitochondria and chloroplasts were originally bacteria fused into other bacteria too, so I don't know. Maybe it's possible.

But just wait, it gets better.

While studying for the biology exam I learned that there are viruses that infect bacteria. Not surprising as such, just one of those thing you never come to think of and then when you do, the reaction is half surprise and half "well, obviously, how did I never realise that".

Anyway, as it turned out, there are viruses, that live in the huge viruses.
I'm serious. Also, they found random DNA, that apparently travelled with the virus in the virus just to hitch a ride, and made the virus in the virus with the help of the virus in the cell multiply itself madly and then hitch another ride somewhere else from a virus in the virus.

What!?

So the world is weird.

That's all for today.

~matu

PS. I don't know if you're following Once Upon a Time, but they just finished the third season (in the US. And internet), and the only thing I have to say is:
Wait... what?