Biologists have discovered signs of living things in giant viruses

Giant viruses were discovered only in 1992 - they are tens of times larger than ordinary viruses, and their genomes

so large that they have always been classified asbacteria and have hardly been studied. At the same time, if an ordinary virus, for a number of reasons, is not considered a living being, then scientists are gradually discovering features in giant viruses that are characteristic only of living organisms.

In particular, in their complex genome, scientistsfound genes that can control metabolic processes, although the giant viruses themselves have no metabolism. However, other types of viruses do not have such genes.

Researchers analyze publicly available databasesmetagenomes from which they collected the alleged genomes of 501 different types of giant viruses belonging to the group of large nuclear cytoplasmic DNA viruses (NCLDV), mainly living in the aquatic environment. Scientists worked only with those DNA sections that contained at least four of the five genes characteristic of NCLDV and had at least 100 thousand base pairs.

It turned out that giant viruses carry in themselvesa huge variety of genes involved in aspects of cellular metabolism, including processes such as nutrient absorption, light collection, and nitrogen metabolism.