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LiveScience
LiveScience
Kiley Price

Bizarre giant viruses with tubular tentacles and star-like shells discovered in New England forest

Different viruses under a microscope. The left virus is turtle-shaped; the middle and right viruses are shaped like stars.

Giant viruses lurking in the soils of a New England forest sport traits never seen in other viruses of similar heft — from star-like outer shells to bizarre, tubular appendages, according to a preprint study published in bioRxiv. 

"What we found is a whole new diversity of shapes that we have never seen before," study co-author Matthias Fischer, a virologist at Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Germany, told Live Science. "I would bet that many of those, if not the majority, are completely new and first sightings of viruses that we have never seen before."

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