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Giant viruses have genes for the production of proteins - an ability that otherwise only independent cells have. What does that reveal about their origins and what do they get out of it?
The giant viruses remained undiscovered for a long time. Because of their unusual size, virologists did not recognize them as viruses under the microscope, but rather what they saw was bacteria. When French researchers identified the first giant virus, the so-called Mimivirus, in 2003, they were amazed: at 0.75 micrometers, it was the size of a small bacterium. But not only that: it had almost 1000
