Scientists have discovered never-before-seen viruses that thrive in sunlit oceans from pole to pole and infect plankton. They dubbed the newfound microbes “mirusviruses” — “mirus” meaning “strange” in Latin.

The researchers concluded that mirusviruses belong to a large group of viruses called Duplodnaviria, which includes the herpesviruses that infect animals and humans, based on shared genes that encode the shell, or “particle” enclosing their DNA. But the strange, newfound viruses also share a staggering number of genes with a group of giant viruses, called Varidnaviria.

This suggests that mirusviruses are a bizarre hybrid between two distantly related viral lineages, the scientists concluded.

“They seem to be an extremely unusual group of viruses,” Tom Delmont(opens in new tab), a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) who participated in the discovery, told Live Science. “This is why we consider them as being chimeric, because they are a mix of two different groups of viruses — on one side the herpesviruses, based on the particle genes, and on the other side the giant viruses, based on many more genes.”

The team described the strange, newfound viruses in a study published Wednesday (April 19) in the journal Nature(opens in new tab). The discovery highlights how little we know about the viruses lurking in Earth’s oceans.

more at livescience.com

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