Mimivirus / Giant Virus Update

Back in March I blogged about the Mimivirus, after someone had mentioned it in the comments of a post at The Loom. My post elicited a comment from Jean-Michel Claverie who is the Editor-in-Chief of GiantVirus.org and a coauthor of much of the recently published work I am about to mention. In his comment, he notes that there was some information soon to be ready for publication.

While reading The Loom tonight, I again found more info about the mimivirus, which I assume is at least some of the work JMC had promised. This time it was the focus of Carl Zimmer's post, which he titled the Kanisza Virus. In the post (please see post the for a better presentation) he points to a recent paper, Mimivirus Relatives in the Sargasso Sea by Elodie Ghedin and Jean-Michel Claverie. He also points to an article titled "The Mimivirus and the emerging Concept of the Giant Virus" in which the authors bring us up to date on the most recent information and ideas about Giant viruses. In fact, they propose to introduce a new word, "girus", to recognize the intermediate status of these giant DNA viruses.

As I noted before Giantvirus.org seems to the hub of information for these new findings.