Bizarre New Organism May be the fourth domain of life

A strange life form has been identified in Bradford, Uk.

Genetic analysis reveals that the organism is so bizarre and unlike anything else seen by scientists that perhaps it should be placed in its own category of living things.

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

full atricle here with magnified picture
www.telegraph.co.uk.../news/2004/10/15/nbug15.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/10/15/ixhome.html

Life just gets stranger and stranger every day. Any biologists care to take a look:>

[edit on 15-10-2004 by radiant_obsidian]
Hope thats better, been having linkage problems hehehe

[edit on 15-10-2004 by radiant_obsidian]

I'd love to be able to check this out further but I'm afraid your link doesn't seem to be working.


.(edit)............................Thanks that better

[edit on 15-10-2004 by pantha]

Read the article. I work in genetics so I was intrigued. Did some further research.

Click Here

This is a March 2003 Science Paper, Vol 299,p 2033. It is just a review paper, easy read for the non-science type. Basically gives the classification of this thing into an order of nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses which includes 4 known family members. They propose this as a new family member within this order.

Summary. It's a virus. It's a neat one, and it has some evolutionarily novel characteristics, but no it's not a 4th domain of life. That is just the media and most likely the scientists who first discovered it in 1992 trying to hype it.

Enjoy

Just goes to show you. We have not nearly enough of a picture of the life that thrives on our world. Didn't even have to deep dive or climb up a remote mountain for this one. Cool.

Interesting stuff -- nice find, and nice followup, folks! This is a new one on me... now that it's been identified, it will be interesting to see where else it's discovered and what variations occur.

As a biology student, I can say that this is f******* fasinating!!

I'd be curious to know about the life-cycle of this organism. The linked source says it "contains genes" for the replication of proteins. I wonder if it copied them from a host organism, or actually manufactures the protiens itself (in which case it is truly alive and not a virus, right???)

"The giant virus has not so far been linked with disease."

A virus that makes its own proteins and has its own DNA repair enzymes.

That thing is scary.

The article didn't specifically say that the thing manufactures proteins.

And that is my question. Does it get the nucleus of a host to manufacture proteins, or does it really make its own.

I remember (I think) from college biology that the definition of life is the homeostasis of manufacturing proteins, using them, and then expelling wastes. By such a definition, a virus is not truly alive. A virus is only a stray bit of code, like malicious computer code.

If the thing actually manufactures protein-chains, it isn't a virus at all, to my understanding.

The article clearly stated that this orginism mimics viruses, it is not a virus itself.

If you read the article I attached, which was published in 2003 (the thing was first discovered in 1992) you can read all about the life cycle of the virus, and yes it is a virus.

This thing has double stranded DNA but lacks ribosomal and protein translation proteins, meaning it requires another organism to synthesize its proteins.

Phylogenetically it fits in well as a new branch of the NCLDV order of viri. Hence it is NOT a 4th domain of life, or at least scientifically it is not classified as such, nor should be.

[edit on 16-10-2004 by contraa]

This is truly amazing. A size of 400nm for viruses is huge. The large pox viruses (smallpox - 200nm) now look small when compared.

It is interesting to see that my microbio text says the largest known viral genome is that of bacphage G (670kbp*). I guess they have to change this now to mimivirus (~800kbp*).

The press release from last year says,"Finally, some preliminary serological evidence (antibody levels) shows that Mimivirus could be linked to pneumonia. An animal model made on mice infected by intranasal route reveals that viral particles can be isolated in a culture medium from lung tissue for at least three weeks after inoculation."

The virus was so large that the researchers initially thought it was a bacterium. But an analysis of its genome revealed the organism to be a virus. It lacks genes found in many bacteria, and has 21 proteins similar to key viral proteins...Because it resembles a bacterium, the researchers named the newly discovered organism Mimivirus (for Mimicking microbe). The virus had infected the amoeba Acanthamoeba polyphaga...The researchers are sequencing the organism�s genome now. Why it has so many genes is a puzzle. �It has more genes than several bacteria,� says Bernard La Scola of Unit� des Rickettsies in Marseille, France, and a member of the research team. �We are trying to understand why a virus that is basically a cell parasite needs to have such a high number of genes.�
Source: www.genomenewsnetwork.org...

That is a great question, why does it have a lot of genes?

* - Edit: changed bp to kbp. Thanks contraa for pointing that out.

[edit on 16-10-2004 by jp1111]

Sounds interesting. This thing was first reported as a virus in ameobas and now mice?? I would be skeptical to attirbute this thing to any known human disease, especially pulmonary, as it would likely have been found there and not in ameobas.

As for the mouse model...what holds true in mice with viri, rarely transitions equivalantly to humans. My work is actually in pediatric pulmonology and we use a viral induced mouse model of chronic asthma. The virus we use causes bronchitis in humans which clears up in a short time. I'n mice it causes bronchiolitis followed by an asthma-like syndrome that lasts for over a year. Just pointing out that if something is found in mice, it's interesting, but it doesn't carry over to humans exactly more often than not, particularly in virology.

Also note, the genome is not 800 basepairs as described above, but instead 800 kilobasepairs, aka 800,000 bp.

[edit on 16-10-2004 by contraa]

I wanted to see what a few of these orfs (potential genes) were for myself. One of the genes I found was choline dehydrogenase. This is an electron transport gene, i.e. involved in metabolism and energy production. There is absolutely no need for a virus to have a gene such as this, yet clearly this is a virus.

I'm not willing to invest the time to look up every single orf to test this hypothesis, as I'm usre someone will publish a paper solving the ting eventually, but my best guess is that this thing was once a bacteria that was someone merged with a virus. Something similar to how we have mitochondria in our cells, which appear to be bacterial in origin. I imagine that many of these genes may in fact do nothing at all other than they somehow fused with the viral genome and are passed on. Just my guess, could be several other things as well.

If you are interested, try it for yourself....
1. Go to Orf Finder
2. In the "Enter GI or Accession" textbox input the desired sequence ID....the various sequences for mimivirus are AABV01000001-AABV01000023. Can try them one at a time.
3. Click "Orf Find"
4. A screen will come up indicating all the orfs that have been found. Click on one of the boxes on the right hand side that has a decent length to it. A screen will reload showing you the predicted sequence of that orf.
5. At the top of the screen, click the button that says "blast" This will search every known DNA sequence for similarities.
6. Click format. A screen comes up saying the page will reload every x seconds. Wait patiently and you results will eventually display
7. A new screen appears. Hopefully some similarity with known DNA sequences was found. Scroll down a bit and all the hits will be listed. The names should give you an idea of what this is similar to. Score indicates how similar the match is, the higher the better. If you click on a score, the page will jump to the sequence alignment and you can see just how similar the sequences are.

Heh not sure if anyone cares to go through this, but if so, have fun.

wow that is weard. This is one of the most strangest thing in this world. I mean i agree this is thing should be geven its own domain. i can say what it is and that is the most unknown i have seen. can some one u2u me when they actualy figure out what it is or if they can give it own domain.

Hughes. It has already been classified. It is a virus. Read the link that I posted in my first reply. Genetically, this thing is a new family member of a prexisting order of viri. It is not a 4th domain of life.

Originally posted by taibunsuu
A virus that makes its own proteins and has its own DNA repair enzymes.

Reminds me of a book a read many years back... I believe it was called Blood Music or Blood Song. It was about a virus (?) strain which affected the blood in mammals. Eventually, the virus gained a form of sentience, would erupt from the hosts, and started their own civilization (more or less, it's been many years). The virus saw us not as intelligent beings, we were beyond their grasp, but rather gods that gave birth to them.

Then, too, there's always the favorite Andromeda Strain...

Aren't micropes fun?