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Scientists have found the biggest virus ( also see http://phyrtual.org/en/project/1675/case-study-free-style/viruses-and-prions) known, called Pandoravirus. It's about one micron in lenght, an authentic record, since a common virus particle can reach only 50 or 100 nanometres. Pandoravirus has opened a new and astonishment questions about life as we know.

Beyond to its special dimension, what that surpise the scientist consists in DNA lenght: it contains about 2,500 genes as compared with 10 genes in many many viruses.

The same astonishment were gone when microbiologists discovered the genus Mimivirus ( ten years ago), the first virus large 0,1 micron. Since this founding, scientists began to think there's no limits in size of the life, as Jean-Michel Claverie, a microbiologists at Aix-Marseille Universitè  in France, claims. 

So, you think that there are many other species of gigant viruses in water, specially where Amoeba cells are particularity abundant. These viruses, in fact, just parasitize Amoeba cells. According to this reality, scientists found two types of Pandoraviruses: Pandoravirus Salinus, from the mouth of Cile's Tunquen River, and Pandoravirus Dulcis from freshwater pond near Melbourne, Australia; both of wich parasitize Amoebas.