Giant viruses may simply be a ‘Frankenstein’ of smaller viruses

Viruses are thought to outnumber the microbes on Earth; both outnumber the stars in the Milky Way. A handful of giant viruses have been discovered in the past two decades, and scientists report a novel group of giant viruses with a more complete set of translation machinery genes than any other virus known to date. They believe that this discovery significantly increases our understanding of viral evolution.