How are pandoraviruses different than other viruses?
Simply put, they have little in common with other viruses—"something that came as a surprise to us," the team said.
For one, the virus reproduces in a curious fashion. Most viruses start a new cell by building an empty "box" and filling it up with DNA over time. But curiously, pandoraviruses do both of these processes at the same time in a process the team calls "knitting."
Perhaps most striking, 93 percent of pandoraviruses' 2,500 genes cannot be traced back to any known lineage in nature. In other words, they are completely alien to us.
Such foreign genes, the team suggests, is evidence for the "controversial existence of a fourth domain of life," in addition to bacteria, archaea, and eukaryota, the latter of which includes complex life like us.
The three-domain system is "probably pretty wrong—we are missing some part of the puzzle here," the team said.
What should you know about these viruses?
First and foremost, that they're not harmful to people, the team emphasized: Most viruses infect other microbes.
Dinamyte Magazine