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Hidden in the microverse all around you, there is a merciless war being fought by the true rulers of this planet, microorganisms. Amoebae, protists, bacteria, archaea and fungi compete for resources and space. And then there are the strange horrors that are viruses, hunting everyone else. Not even being alive, they are the tiniest, most abundant and deadliest beings on earth, killing trillions every day. Not interested in resources, only in living things to take over. Or so we thought.
It turns out that there are giant viruses that blur the line between life and death – and other viruses hunting them.
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hidden in the microverse all around you there’s
a merciless war being fought by the true rulers of this planet microorganisms amoeba protists
bacteria archaea and fungi compete for resources and space and then there are the strange horrors
that are viruses hunting everyone else not even alive they are the tiniest most abundant and
deadliest beings on earth killing trillions every day not interested in resources only in living
things to take over also we thought turns out there are giant viruses that blur the line between
life and death and other viruses hunting them considerably smaller than your cells or even
bacteria viruses are nothing but a hull a tiny bit of genetic material and a few proteins no
metabolism no way to propel themselves no will or ambition they float around aimlessly and hope
to stumble upon a victim to infect and take over viruses are so simple that we’re not sure
if they should count as living things or not some scientists argue viruses are alive others
think that the cells they infect are the actual living viruses hybrid organisms called viral
cells and the viral particles are more like seeds or spores and many others think viruses are just
dead material the origin of viruses is a mystery because how can something that needs victims
to make more of itself emerge in the first place there are many ideas viruses may have been
essential steps in the emergence of life or maybe they started out as escaped dna from cells that
became really good at making copies of themselves maybe they are the descendants of truly lazy
parasites that let others do all the work for them the current thinking is that viruses probably
emerged multiple times from different origins but we simply don’t know for sure yet whatever the
truth is viruses are the most successful beings on this planet there’s an estimated 10 000 billion
billion billion viruses on earth if we put them all next to each other they would stretch for 100
million light years 500 milky way galaxies wide very recently viruses became even weirder
when scientists found a completely new type giant viruses nicknamed gyrus not only did it
break all sorts of records but questioned many assumptions we had about their nature gyruses
even come with their own parasites virophages viruses that hunt other viruses which seemingly
makes no sense at all and since we identified the first one in 2003 it seems like these giants
are everywhere we look in the oceans in water towers in the guts of pigs and the mouths of
humans and they’re even weirder than we thought gyruses look funny like hairy geometric
forms or mini pickles much larger than all viruses we knew before which explains how
they could hide in plain sight for centuries scientists saw them under their microscopes
and just thought they had to be bacteria it’s like suddenly discovering there
are elephant-sized ducks everywhere most gyruses we’ve found so far hunt amoebi and
other single-celled beings when they find a victim they connect with it and use its natural processes
to enter the cell like all viruses their goal is to misappropriate the victim’s infrastructure and
procreate imagine a mouse crawling into your mouth and using your guts and bones and
fat tissue to build a mouse factory the gyrus unloads its attack proteins and genetic
material and rearranges the cell from the inside its structural elements protein production
machinery and large amounts of mitochondria for energy are changed to become an actual
factory called viroplasm some gyruses even construct a membrane to shield them from the
cell’s antiviral defenses once finished the viroplasm begins to assemble new gyruses using
the victim up from the inside until it’s filled up finally the invader usually orders the cell to
self-destruct and releases new gyruses to look for new prey but what makes gyruses special
is not their modus operandi or their size even it’s that they are much more complex than thought
possible for a virus your cells have around 20 000 genes a typical bacterium has a few thousand
genes the coronavirus has around 15 hiv or the flu around 10. the number of genes alone is certainly
not everything the tomato for example has 35 000 genes but generally we think of life as a
complex system so below a certain complexity level something may be closer to dead material
rather than a living organism but gyruses can have hundreds or even thousands of genes
blurring the line between living and dead things and it’s not just the numbers that are special
but also what these genes do we used to think of viral genes as the simplest of instructions just
enough to overcome the defense of their victims and make new viruses but many gyrus genes
are completely unique basically mystery genes even more confusing a huge selection of their
genes that are actually hallmarks of living things genes that regulate nutrient intake energy
production light harvesting replication or are just necessary to keep cells alive some recent
studies have even suggested that some gyruses with very complex genomes may be able to maintain
a basic level of metabolism on their own which if true will shake up what we thought of viruses
even more we still don’t know anything for sure but one idea about gyrus genes is that they might
fundamentally alter the physiology and evolution of their victims by integrating their own genomes
and merging with them into chimeric organisms or the other way around take some host genes with
them and be changed themselves for billions of years gyruses may have been existing alongside
and infecting cells exerting an unseen influence on the development of life not just as a parasite
but jerking evolution in different directions by mixing genes around in all directions which brings
us to another unique thing about them virophages the viruses hunting gyruses the concept itself is
a bit mind-boggling how can a thing that might be dead hunt another thing that might be dead too
let’s look at one of them the viruphage sputnik is hunting a gyrus called mama virus that
itself is hunting amoebi sputnik is a tiny minimalistic virus that doesn’t even have
the genes and tools to replicate itself what it does have is the ability to hijack the
viroplasm factories of mama viruses so virophages need their victim the gyrus to infect their victim
an amoeba first and then they can parasitize it a memovirus viroplasm infected by sputnik can only
produce very few new gyruses and among these many are deformed and broken unable to infect further
cells instead it makes loads of new sputnik viruphages other virophages are even more subtle
when they infect a viroplasm they just integrate their genetic code into the newly produced gyruses
like sleeper agents the next time one of these infiltrated gyruses successfully infects a cell
it produces mostly viruphages instead of gyruses gyruses are not completely defenseless
though a few years ago the world was in awe when scientists discovered crispr a bacterial
defense system against viruses it turns out some gyruses have a system that might be similar a
sort of gyrus immune system against virophages in turn virophages can also be used as an
antigyrus defense mechanism by living cells some protests have been found that integrated the
genetic code of virophages into their genome and kept it when the protists were infected by gyruses
they used the code to create virophages themselves to take over the gyrus factories in the end
the protists would still be killed by the gyrus infection but instead of releasing gyruses to kill
its buddies it released virophages to hunt them the amazing thing about everything we’ve told you
in this video is that we’re still very much at the beginning it’s not even been 20 years since the
discovery of gyruses and virophages there is so much going on in the microverse life is not an
isolated event but a ping pong game of trillions of organisms and viruses so when you feel down and
like there’s not that much new to discover think of gyruses and all the other elephant-sized ducks
all around us invisible until we look more closely
