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These new images may look like alien life forms, but contain viruses never before seen on Earth.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany discovered a group of giant virus-like particles in New England soil with tentacles and star-shaped shells – much like a turtle.
Giant viruses tend to be larger than most, ranging from 0.2 to 1.5 microns, and are found in oceans, Arctic lakes and melting permafrost.
While newly found bizarre virus-like particles may strike fear in some, the researchers said these are unlikely to pose a threat to humans, but are “very important players of the ecosystem.”
The newly discovered giant viruses showed tentacle-like ‘electron-dense inner tube’ appendages, ‘icosahedral’ protein shells shaped like 20-sided dice, ‘star’ designs and other unusual shapes whose biological purposes are still unknown
The “Gorgon” giant viruses are named after the terrifying snake-haired woman of Greek mythology: Medusa and her two sisters, Stheno and Euryale. The researchers speculate that some of these tentacles are designed to implant the infectious genetic payload of the virus
The new research, posted on bioRxiv while awaiting peer review, was conducted by virologist Matthias Fischer of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Germany and his colleagues.
In 2018, the team collected soil samples from the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, where giant viruses are known to thrive.
However, the party recovered from the dirt was unlike anything they had ever seen.
They showed tentacle-like ‘electron-tight inner tube’ appendages, ‘icosahedral’ protein shells shaped like 20-sided dice, ‘star’ designs and other unusual shapes whose biological purposes are still unknown
In the past, efforts to characterize giant viruses in Harvard Forest have focused on their tightly packed genomes, which can contain as many as 2.5 million DNA base pairs.
But for their study, Fischer’s team focused on the shape, or “morphology,” of the microbes, scanning soil samples with a transmission electron microscope beam to produce detailed images of the giant viruses and nearby virus-like particles.
A class of giant viruses they found resembled the ornate, crystalline bottles made centuries ago to store perfume, earning them the name “Flacon.”
The newly found ‘Gorgon’ viruses (above) each had about eight to eleven tubular, tentacle-like appendages, each about 500-650 nanometers long and 30-65 nanometers wide
Biologists took soil samples from Harvard University’s 4,000-acre Harvard Forest research reserve (which includes this root system pictured) to answer how microscopic biodiversity within ecosystems interacts with all the better-known species visible to the naked eye
Another set, the “Gorgon” giant viruses, are named after the terrifying snake-haired women of Greek mythology, including Medusa and her two sisters, Stheno and Euryale.
The “Gorgon” viruses each had about eight to 11 tubular, tentacle-like appendages, Fischer’s group reported, each about 500-650 nanometers long and 30-65 nanometers wide.
They speculate that these tentacles may be hollow and that one on each virus is uniquely evolved for “genome release,” meaning some of these tentacles are designed to implant the virus’s genetic payload.
“What we’ve found is a whole new diversity of shapes that we’ve never seen before,” Fischer said Live Science.
“I’m willing to bet that many, if not the majority of them, are completely new and first sightings of viruses that we’ve never seen before.”
Giant viruses have not yet been proven to pose a threat to humans.
The microorganisms are mainly known to infect other unicellular microbes such as amoeba and paramecia.
Fischer conducted the study because their exact role in these complex wilderness dynamics is still poorly understood.
“They’re in the water, in the air, on your skin, in your guts — you just don’t see them,” Fischer said, “and they have very beneficial effects, not just for the ecology, but for the long-term the evolution. ‘