Life - but not as we know it...
Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:22 am
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ortal.html
The creature, first discovered in a small industrial cooling tower on the outskirts of the city, could qualify for a new "domain" in the tree of life - where a domain is a bigger category than a kingdom or a phylum.
The "giant virus", dubbed the Mimivirus, or "mimicking microbe", because it was first mistaken for a bacterium, inhabits amoebae and is more than twice as big as any other virus so far found. At about half a millionth of a metre across - around the size of a small bacterium - it is one of the few that can be seen under a light microscope.
If you access the Telegraph's article, you will see that the picture looks like
a big hairy smiling face! (200,000 times' magnification).
The creature, first discovered in a small industrial cooling tower on the outskirts of the city, could qualify for a new "domain" in the tree of life - where a domain is a bigger category than a kingdom or a phylum.
The "giant virus", dubbed the Mimivirus, or "mimicking microbe", because it was first mistaken for a bacterium, inhabits amoebae and is more than twice as big as any other virus so far found. At about half a millionth of a metre across - around the size of a small bacterium - it is one of the few that can be seen under a light microscope.
If you access the Telegraph's article, you will see that the picture looks like
a big hairy smiling face! (200,000 times' magnification).