[...] "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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 07 2018, @09:10AM
It uses DNA and RNA. I expect in a few generations half of developers will be using those to develop their systems.