Tuesday, May 05, 2009

The Virus

Wonderful article ...
The 10 Genes of a Human Flu Virus, Furiously Evolving - Carl (The Loom) Zimmer - NYTimes.com
... The sheer number of viruses on Earth is beyond our ability to imagine. “In a small drop of water there are a billion viruses,” Dr. Wolkowicz said. Virologists have estimated that there are a million trillion trillion viruses in the world’s oceans.

Viruses are also turning out to be astonishingly diverse. Shannon Williamson of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., has been analyzing the genes of ocean viruses. A tank of 100 to 200 liters of sea water may hold 100,000 genetically distinct viruses. “We’re just scratching the surface of virus diversity,” Dr. Williamson said. “I think we’re going to be continually surprised...
By what order of magnitude does the sum of their DNA exceed that of all multicellular animals?

1 comment:

Jesmi said...

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