Giant viruses discovered living in Greenland's dark ice and red snow
www.livescience.com
The giant viruses might infect algae that are increasing Greenland's ice melt. These viruses could help kill off the damaging algal blooms, helping to reduce some of the impacts of climate change.

The giant viruses might infect algae that are increasing Greenland’s ice melt. These viruses could help kill off the damaging algal blooms, helping to reduce some of the impacts of climate change.

  • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 months ago

    Perhaps the 1500 number is talking about DNA complexity? I’m no virologist, but as I understand it most “normal” viruses have extremely short DNA strands. Perhaps this one is so big because it’s more complex DNA

    • Beryl@lemmy.world
      2·
      6 months ago

      Nope, I looked at DNA length, that’s what the kb or Mb in my previous post is about. Kb stands for kilobases, each base or nucleotide being one of those A, T, C and G that constitute DNA. Biologists mesure the size of a genome by counting these bases. Average size for a virus is around 10,000 bases or 10kb (sources say 7-20kb) and they don’t get much smaller than 3.5kb.