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A Rapid Strategy for the Isolation of New Faustoviruses from Environmental Samples Using Vermamoeba vermiformis
Published on: June 4, 2016
Redefining viruses: lessons from Mimivirus
Didier Raoult1, Patrick Forterre
1Unité des Rickettsies, IRD-CNRS UMR 6236, IFR-48, Faculté de Médecine, 27 Bd Jean Moulin, 13385 Marseille, France. didier.raoult@gmail.com
Abstract:
Viruses are the most abundant living entities and probably had a major role in the evolution of life, but are still defined using negative criteria. Here, we propose to divide biological entities into two groups of organisms: ribosome-encoding organisms, which include eukaryotic, archaeal and bacterial organisms, and capsid-encoding organisms, which include viruses. Other replicons (for example, plasmids and viroids) can be termed 'orphan replicons'. Based on this suggested classification system, we propose a new definition for a virus--a capsid-encoding organism that is composed of proteins and nucleic acids, self-assembles in a nucleocapsid and uses a ribosome-encoding organism for the completion of its life cycle.
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