The microorganisms virus that shouldn't exist
The microorganisms virus that shouldn't exist: (but it does)
Hidden in the microverse all around you, there's a merciless war being fought by the true rulers of this planet, microorganisms. Amoeba protists and then there are the strange horrors that are viruses hunting everyone else, not even alive.
They are the tiniest, most abundant, and deadliest beings on earth. They are not interested in resources, only in living things to take over.
It turns out there are giant viruses that blur the line between life and death and other viruses hunting them are considerably smaller than your cells or even bacteria. They are nothing but a hull, a tiny bit of genetic material, and a few proteins. They have no metabolism, no way to propel themselves, no will or ambition. They float around aimlessly and hope to stumble upon a victim to infect and take over.
Virus
Viruses are so simple that we're not sure if they should count as living things or not. Some scientists argue that viruses are alive, others think that the cells they infect are actually living. The origin of viruses is a mystery because how can something that needs victims to make more of itself emerge in the first place? There are many ideas. Maybe they started out as escaped DNA from cells that became really good at making copies of themselves. Maybe they are the descendants of truly lazy parasites that let others do all the work for them. The current thinking is that viruses probably emerge multiple times from different origins, but we simply don't know for sure.
Whatever the truth is, viruses are the most successful beings on this planet. There are an estimated 10 000 billion viruses on earth. If we put them all next to each other, they would stretch for 100 million light years, 500 milky way galaxies wide.
Very recently, viruses became even weirder when scientists found a completely new type of giant virus nicknamed Gyrus. Not only did it break all sorts of records, but it questioned many assumptions we had about their nature. Gyruses even come with their own parasites, virophages viruses that hunt other viruses, which seemingly makes no sense at all.
Since we identified the first one in 2003, it seems like these giants are everywhere we look: in the oceans, in water towers, in the guts of pigs, and in the mouths of humans. They look funny, like hairy geometric forms or mini pickles. They are much larger than all the viruses we knew before, which explains how they could hide in plain sight for centuries. It's like suddenly discovering there are elephant-sized ducks everywhere.
Most gyruses we've found so far hunt amoebi and other single-celled beings. When they find a victim, they connect with it and use its natural processes to enter the cell.
Like all viruses, their goal is to misappropriate the victim's infrastructure and procreate. Imagine a mouse crawling into your mouth and using your guts and bones and fat tissue to build a mouse factory. The gyrus unloads its attack proteins and genetic material and rearranges them. Then, the viroplasm begins to assemble new gyruses using the victim from the inside until it's filled up. Finally, the invader usually orders the cell to self-destruct and releases new gyruses to look for new prey.
Even more confusing, a huge selection of their genes are actually hallmarks of living things, such as genes that regulate nutrient intake, energy production, light harvesting, or are just necessary to keep cells alive. Gyruses may have existed alongside and infecting cells, exerting an unseen influence on the development of life, not just as a parasite but jerking evolution in different directions by mixing genes around in all directions, which brings us to another unique thing about them.
Virophages the viruses that hunt gyruses. The concept itself is a bit mind-boggling. How can a thing that might be dead hunt another thing that might be dead too? Let's look at one of them. The viruphage Sputnik is hunting a gyrus called Mama virus that itself is hunting amoebi. Sputnik is a tiny, minimalistic virus that doesn't even have the genes and tools to replicate itself. What it does have is the ability to hijack the viroplasm factories of mama viruses. Mama viruses need their victim, the gyrus, to infect their victim with an amoeba first, then they can parasitize it.
A memovirus viroplasm infected by Sputnik can only produce very few new gyruses and among these, many are deformed and broken, unable to infect further cells. Instead, it made loads of new sputniks. Viruphages the next time one of these infiltrated gyruses successfully infects a cell, it produces mostly viruphages instead of gyruses.
Gyruses are not completely defenseless. A few years ago, scientists discovered Crispr, a bacterial defense system against viruses. It turns out, some gyruses have a system that might be similar to a sort of gyrus immune system against viruses. It's not even been 20 years since the discovery of gyruses and virophages. There is so much going on in the microverse.
In conclusion
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