Abstract
Two amoeba-infecting giant DNA viruses with genomes twice the size of, and unrelated to, any previously described viruses were uncovered from marine sediments in one case and pond mud in the other, according to Chantal Abergel and Jean-Michel Claverie from Aix-Marseille Universite in France and colleagues there and at the Universite Joseph Fourier in Grenoble. The researchers named them “Pandoraviruses” because “they'll undoubtedly unleash a host of questions about the origin of life on Earth and the evolutionary role of viruses,” says Claverie. Details appear in the July 19, 2013 Science (341:281–286).
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