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[...] "Most people are familiar with viruses," said Christopher Schvarcz, the UH Mānoa oceanography graduate student who led the project as part of his doctoral dissertation, "because there are so many that cause diseases in humans. But we are not alone; even the microscopic plankton in the ocean are constantly battling viral infections."
Much of the phytoplankton that grows in the ocean every day gets eaten, thereby sustaining animals in the marine food web. It is common, however, for viral infections to spread through populations of phytoplankton. When this happens, the infected phytoplankton cells disintegrate and are decomposed by bacteria, diverting that food source away from the animals.
[...] Viruses have to replicate inside of cells, putting some constraints on how big they can be, but the known upper size limit of viruses has been creeping upward over the past 15 years as researchers have focused on finding more examples of what are now referred to as "giant" viruses.
"Most viruses are so tiny that we need an electron microscope to see them," said Steward "but these giants rival bacteria in size, and their genomes often code for functions we have never seen in viruses before."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday May 05 2018, @10:18PM
Hawaii, they want to ban the good kind of sunscreen. Because they say it hurts the coral. And we saw the week before last, Fake News Nature says the coral is dieing because of global warming. But many people are saying, maybe it's viruses that are killing the coral.