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Marine viruses are defined by their habitat as viruses that are found in marine environments, that is, in the saltwater of seas or oceans or the brackish water of coastal estuaries. Viruses are small infectious agents that can only replicate inside the living cells of a host organism , because they need the replication machinery of the host to ...
It is estimated viruses kill 20% of this biomass each day and that there are 15 times as many viruses in the oceans as there are bacteria and archaea. Viruses are the main agents responsible for the rapid destruction of harmful algal blooms , [ 40 ] which often kill other marine life. [ 54 ]
[1] [2] This family belongs to a super-group of large viruses known as nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses. Evidence was published in 2014 suggesting that specific strains of Phycodnaviridae might infect humans rather than just algal species, as was previously believed. [ 3 ]
Some members of this family can have a linear double-stranded DNA while others have a circular double stranded DNA. The genome has been found to be up to 560 kilobases in length. Up to 50% of the DNA can be represented by guanine or cytosine. This virus is known to infect algae, which means it is found in the ocean. [26]
Orthopoxvirus particles. A DNA virus is a virus that has a genome made of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that is replicated by a DNA polymerase.They can be divided between those that have two strands of DNA in their genome, called double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses, and those that have one strand of DNA in their genome, called single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses. dsDNA viruses primarily belong ...
The virus, later named the Skeletonema costatum DNA virus (ScDCV), was found to have an icosahedral capsid and a double-stranded DNA genome. [16] Subsequently, after the discovery of Skeletonema costatum DNA virus (ScDCV), another Diatom virus was isolated and characterized as the Chaetoceros setoensis DNA Virus (CsetDNAV), which was found to ...
The origin of viruses is unclear because they do not form fossils, so molecular techniques have been used to compare the DNA or RNA of viruses and are a useful means of investigating how they arise. [107] Viruses are now recognised as ancient and as having origins that pre-date the divergence of life into the three domains. [108]
The tiny (0.6 μm) marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus, discovered in 1986, forms today an important part of the base of the ocean food chain and accounts for much of the photosynthesis of the open ocean [84] and an estimated 20% of the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. [85]