DNA viruses welcome a new member

Medusavirus, a new large DNA virus was isolated from a hot spring in Japan by Masaharu Takemura, a virologist at the Tokyo University of Science. The researchers at Tokyo University proposed that it be a part of it’s own family, medusa virus. It’s aptly named after Medusa, because when Takemura grew microbes from the hot spring mud in his lab, notice that amoebas died in the presence of this virus, having bursted open in as  a result. However other cells would harden and shrivel, much how like Medusa turns her male victims into stone.  s for electron morphology, it is icosahedral and covered in spikes (remind you of adenovirus?). When sequencing its genome, they found some molecular peculiarities, it has genes encoding for all five types of histones that are present in complex cells. There are a couple of theories as to how it acquired these histones… to find out read on here:  https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/03/giant-medusavirus-hosts-turn-to-stone/585289/  -Brittany Stinson