Is the World's Largest Virus a Genetic Time Capsule?

gbrumfiel writes "Researchers in France have discovered the world's largest virus and given it a terrifying name: Pandoravirus. NPR reports it doesn't pose a threat to people, but its genetic code could hint at an unusual origin. The team believes that the virus may carry the genes from a long-dead branch of the tree of life, one that possibly even started on Mars or somewhere else. Other scientists are skeptical, but everyone agrees that the new giant virus is pretty cool."

Re:One micrometer

[TapeCutter]

Coincidentally, there was a Brian Cox doco on last night that mentioned the world's smallest insect, a wasp that measures 0.4mm, my 54yo eyes couldn't detect them but he described them as "very fine specs of dust". So a rough estimate says a young pair of eyes could pick out a group of less than 500 individuals. According to the same doco, if you exclude viruses from the tree of life then there is roughly 22 orders of magnitude between the largest trees and the smallest microbes. Basically the megavirus and wasp's sizes are less than three orders of magnitude apart, which is quite incredible since I'm used to thinking of viruses as basically large molecules (IIRC the smallest known viruses are composed of a mere 10,000 atoms).

Re:Just a little

[jamesh]

The team believes that the virus may carry the genes from a long-dead branch of the tree of life, one that possibly even started on Mars or somewhere else.

Other scientists are skeptical

No shit? That's one heck of an extraordinary claim right there. It'd be very fascinating if true, but that's going to need some strong evidence backing it. Either way, a virus of its size is still quite interesting.

Easy to prove. Just compare the genetic material in the virus to all the other life we've found on Mars (or somewhere else).