The world's second largest virus has been discovered! (As if we didn't need more trouble =-=)

This huge virus has been dubbed CroV by the scientists that discovered and is currently known to only infect marine life that are also single celled organisms.

The reason why this virus is so huge because of the number of genomes that it contains. 730000 base pairs or genetic building blocks as some people call them. Normal viruses usually have far less than that with the largest known 'normal' virus only containing slightly less than half of the number of genomes CroV has.

Not only that, because the biggest virus, Mimivirus (has 1.2m base pairs) is only distantly related to this CroV virus, it suggests there are more huge viruses. Scientists who have been examining the CroV virus have found surprising things. Mainly that the virus (and other huge viruses) has genomes that allow to have features to have similar to cells.

due to thus, some scientists are arguing that a fourth domain of life should be declared for this huge viruses. This is because viruses share a common set of genes with cells as well as obeying the same laws of physics as any other cell.