Ushikuvirus: a new giant virus infecting amoebae (IMAGE)

Tokyo University of Science

Ushikuvirus: a new giant virus infecting amoebae

Caption

A joint research team discovered and characterized ushikuvirus, a new giant DNA virus that infects vermamoeba. This image (a) shows the 3D reconstruction of the virus, highlighting its spiked capsid (d). The finding further supports the nuclear virus origin hypothesis, which proposes that viruses played a role in the evolution of eukaryotic cells.

Credit

Professor Kazuyoshi Murata from the National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS) Image source: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01206-25

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