Scientists Discover 1.5 Billion-Year-Old “Giant” Viruses In Yellowstone

May 17, 2024

Scientists recently made a huge find in Yellowstone National Park, they found “giant” viruses that are about 1.5 billion years old. The name “giant” comes from the fact that these viruses’ genes are much bigger than those of most viruses. Surprisingly, they don’t hurt people and give us important information about how life began on Earth.

Significance of Giant Viruses

Finding these old viruses is very important for understanding the time when Earth’s first single-cell creatures were starting to form. Researchers who study these huge viruses learn a lot about the conditions in the environment and the biological processes that affect the early stages of life’s development.

Research Methodology and Findings

Scientists took DNA samples from the hot spring and did a lot of work on them. The genes they found came from bacteria, algae, and archaea. They identified about 3,700 possible viruses, and about two-thirds of them were called “giant viruses.”

About Yellowstone National Park

The first national park in the world was Yellowstone National Park, which opened in 1872.
There are more than 2.2 million acres of it in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
It is on top of a supervolcano and has more than 10,000 thermal features and more than 500 geysers, including the famous Old Faithful.
The park has more animals than any other park in the lower 48 states. It is home to the Canadian lynx and grizzly bears, among other species.
One of the biggest lakes in North America is Yellowstone Lake.
The park played a role in creating the National Park Service in 1916.

More About Giant Viruses

Giant viruses, which are much bigger than normal viruses, change the way people think about viruses. They were found in 2003 with the Mimivirus and can be seen with a light microscope. They are different from other viruses because they have big genomes, some of them contain over 1,000 genes, which allow them to make proteins and give them more independence from host cells. The Acanthamoeba polyphaga Mimivirus is unique among big viruses because it has genes for translation, which were thought to be only found in cells before. Some other examples are Pandoraviruses and Pithovirus sibericum, which were found in 30,000-year-old Siberian ice and show how durable viruses can be.

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