Giant virus 'opens Pandora's box', says French team

Dr Chantal Abergel is not easily surprised by the discovery of giant viruses. A director of research at Aix-Marseille University and the CNRS (France’s National Centre for Scientific Research), she has already been involved in identifying two very large viruses, the Mimivirus and Megavirus.

In fact, the IGS laboratory headed by her colleague, Professor Jean-Michel Claverie, had long predicted the existence of giant viruses. And yet they were taken aback by their own latest discovery... a virus so big that it resembled a cell.

“We were expecting giant viruses to have 1,000 genes; however, one of the two viruses we recently found had 2,556 genes, which is huge,” Dr Abergel told France24.com, adding that the other virus’s gene count was around 1,500.

The team at the IGS laboratory discovered the two viruses from samples obtained in Chile and Australia – two among several countries they were drawn to after earlier studies had pointed to the prevalence of giant viruses in marine environments.