Cafeteria roenbergensis virus (CroV) is a giant virus

Virus

A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms. Viruses infect all types of organisms, from animals and plants to bacteria and archaea...

 that infects the marine zooplankton

Zooplankton

Zooplankton are heterotrophic plankton. Plankton are organisms drifting in oceans, seas, and bodies of fresh water. The word "zooplankton" is derived from the Greek zoon , meaning "animal", and , meaning "wanderer" or "drifter"...

  Cafeteria roenbergensis

Cafeteria roenbergensis

Cafeteria roenbergensis is a marine Bicosoecid described in 1988 by Tom Fenchel and D.J. Patterson. It is the first known species of Cafeteria.-Description:...

. CroV has the largest genome of any known marine virus, consisting of ~730,000 base pairs of double-stranded DNA. Among its 544 predicted protein-coding genes are several that are usually restricted to cellular organisms, such as translation

Translation (genetics)

In molecular biology and genetics, translation is the third stage of protein biosynthesis . In translation, messenger RNA produced by transcription is decoded by the ribosome to produce a specific amino acid chain, or polypeptide, that will later fold into an active protein...

 factors and enzymes for DNA repair

DNA repair

DNA repair refers to a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as UV light and radiation can cause DNA damage, resulting in as many as 1...

 and carbohydrate

Carbohydrate

A carbohydrate is an organic compound with the empirical formula ; that is, consists only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, with a hydrogen:oxygen atom ratio of 2:1 . However, there are exceptions to this. One common example would be deoxyribose, a component of DNA, which has the empirical...

 synthesis. CroV is distantly related to Mimivirus

Mimivirus

Mimivirus is a viral genus containing a single identified species named Acanthamoeba polyphaga mimivirus , or is a group of phylogenetically related large viruses . In colloquial speech, APMV is more commonly referred to as just “mimivirus”...

 and belongs to a group of viruses known as Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses

Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses

The nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses or NCLDV refers to a number of families of large eukaryotic DNA viruses:# Asfarviridae# Iridoviridae# Marseilleviridae# Megaviridae# Mimiviridae# Phycodnaviridae# Poxviridae...

.
CroV is itself parasitized by a virophage named "Mavirus".

External links

• Biodiversity: More complicated than you think. A new, giant virus is confounding old certainties, The Economist, Oct 28th 2010