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The Pandoravirus does not look like anything else, and could be an alien life form – but it's not going to make us sick.
It's called the Pandoravirus and it might be the world's biggest virus yet.
The two French scientists who discovered, that the organism's vase-like shape and unique genomic content reminded them of the mythical Pandora's Box.
"The opening of the box will definitively break the foundations of what we thought viruses were," wrote environmental virologists Jean-Michel Claverie of Aix-Marseille University and Chantal Abergel of the National Center for Scientific Research in France.
In a study published by the journal Science, Claverie and Abergel write that Pandoraviruses are totally different from the previous giant virus family – the Megaviridae – and may have ancient roots.
"Because more than 93 percent of Pandoraviruses genes resemble nothing known, their origin cannot be traced back to any known cellular lineage," the study says. "However, their DNA polymerase does cluster with those of other giant DNA viruses, suggesting the controversial existence of a fourth domain of life."
What that means, Claverie said, is that everything about the Pandoraviruses – their genome, shape, size and the way they multiply – indicate that these new entities are really "aliens."
"We of course use this term in a figurative manner first – but it is true that at one point in our research, these features were so strange that we went as far as to verify that they still used the regular genetic code that is common to all living things on earth," Claverie said.
