Weird things about viruses

Mamavirus , closely related to Mimivirus but even bigger, also turned up inside an amoeba in a Paris cooling tower. Maybe somebody should clean those towers. Mamavirus is so big that it has its own dependent, a satellite virus named Sputnik. Amoebas turn out to be great places to seek out new viruses. They like to swallow big things and so serve as a kind of mixing bowl where viruses and bacteria can swap genes.

Viruses are already known to infect animals, plants, fungi, protozoa, archaea, and bacteria. Sputnik and Mamavirus suggest that they can infect other viruses, too. Most of those embedded viruses are now extinct, but in French researchers applied for permission to resurrect one of them.

Some scientists objected, saying the resurrected virus could go on a rampage; the research ministry approved the project. You can even freeze viruses without damaging them. Viruses never took the evolutionary jump to become independent, living beings.

But they found a highly efficient way to survive and multip ly — by being parasites that hijack living hosts. When one copy of the virus genome gets into a host cell, it multiplies incredibly quickly. Within hours, thousands of copies can be made from a single virus.

Since viruses cycle through multiple generations so quickly, they end up making frequent mistakes when copying their genetic information. The recipe, in the simplest cases: Take the purified protein and the purified nucleic genome. Mix them in water under the right conditions for salt, acidity, and temperature.

In time, those components will spontaneously organize into infectious virus particles. In , Symantec launched its first Norton Antivirus. Before development of computer networks, many viruses were transferred using floppy disks.

WinVer 1. Studies show author of malicious software is typically a male, between 14 and 25 years of age. In January , Mydoom virus infected almost a quarter-million computers in a day. More than new computer viruses are created and released every month. The most expensive computer virus of all time was MyDoom, it caused In , there were only 50 known computer viruses but now there are more than 48, viruses.

It is observed that virus writers start by writing codes as children to test programming skills until it reaches dangerous level. In spite of having a large number of security programs and security methods, there is not a single anti-virus that can detect and clean all types of viruses. In many countries like Germany, Finland it is illegal to write a computer virus program. Instead, they're made of genetic material, usually DNA or its chemical cousin RNA, that's wrapped in a protein coating.

Because of their ability to integrate their genetic code into the code of their host, viral genes are found hidden in the genes of many living things, including humans. But exactly how and why viruses work their genetic tricks remains a mystery that researchers working in a wide range of fields, from evolutionary biology and molecular biology to neurology and the study of chronic diseases, are trying to solve.

The neurons of animal brains, including human brains, hold the genetic remnants of an ancient viral infection that may be key to how thought processes work , researchers reported in two papers in the journal Cell in January.

The researchers discovered that a gene called Arc, which is found in four-limbed animals, is a genetic code leftover from an ancient virus. Moreover, they found that this gene is crucial to nerve cells' ability to build certain types of tiny packages of genetic material and send them off to other nerve cells. This process explains how nerve cells exchange the information that is needed for reorganization of cells. Brain functions including conscious thought and the concept of the "self" may only be possible because of this process, the researchers said.

And if the process does not work properly, the synapses, or the junctions between the neurons, may become dysfunctional. More research is needed to understand how the Arc gene became a part of the animal genome, and exactly what information is passed from one neuron to another because of instructions from Arc, they said.