400 Nanometers! That's huge!

[Darrik 0]

from Entrez PubMed

The 1.2-Mb Genome Sequence of Mimivirus.

 

Raoult D, Audic S, Robert C, Abergel C, Renesto P, Ogata H, La Scola B, Susan M, Claverie JM.

 

Unite des Rickettsies, Faculte de Medecine, CNRS UMR6020, Universite de la Mediterranee, 13385 Marseille Cedex 05, France.

 

We recently reported the discovery and preliminary characterization of Mimivirus, the largest known virus, with a 400-nm particle size comparable to mycoplasma. Mimivirus is a double-stranded DNA virus growing in amoebae. We now present its 1,181,404-bp genome sequence, consisting of 1262 putative ORFs, 10% of which exhibit a significant similarity with proteins of known functions. In addition to exceptional genome size, Mimivirus exhibits many features that distinguish it from other nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses. The most unexpected is the presence of numerous genes encoding central protein translation components, including 4 amino-acyl tRNA synthetases, peptide release factor 1, translation elongation factor EF-TU, and translation initiation factor 1. The genome also exhibit 6 tRNAs. Other remarkable features include the presence of both type I and type II topoisomerases, of components of all DNA repair pathways, of many polysaccharide synthesis enzymes, and of one intein-containing gene. The size and complexity of Mimivirus genome challenge the established frontier between viruses and parasitic cellular organisms. This new sequence data might help shed a new light on the origin of DNA viruses and their role in the early evolution of eukaryotes.

and from Slashdot

A Truly Alive Virus

 

Posted by michael on Thursday October 21, @08:39AM

from the cross-breed dept.

cyclop writes "Microbiologists are puzzled by the genome sequence of the giant Mimivirus. It seems this virus has even more genes than many bacteria, is able to synthesize its own proteins and therefore is, by definition, alive. 'We are seeing an organism here. There is DNA, RNA and plenty of proteins,' says Didier Raoult, who reports the work in this week's Science."

 

 

 

yup, you heard it here first! viruses are now considered alive, and are the forth group of live, or something like that

[lt james black 0]

accualy, no, i heard it on slashdot.org a long time ago, so accualy, i heard it here second. (The second one is the one from slashdot.org)

 

I would have quoted it if i could figure out how to make the quote thing work

[Vex Xiang 0]

A living virus? No kiddin! Wow thats something.