• Question: What is the strangest virus/ bacteria you have seen in your career?

    Asked by zambiekittehcatt to Ian on 17 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Ian Hands-Portman

      Ian Hands-Portman answered on 17 Mar 2014:

      I can’t show the pictures yet as we’re waiting for it to be published but in the deep sea samples we found viruses longer than the bacteria they were infecting – around three times as long. We suspect they need such long tails as it gives them a better chance of finding and latching onto their prey.

      As for bacteria, I’ve seen Nanoarchaeum equitans – a big name for something tiny, it’s the smallest yet found cell and it’s a bacterium that has to live stuck to the outside of another bacterium called Ingnicoccus as it can’t make its own cell membranes. Both of them only live in hot acid water in the deep sea.

      The one I’d most like to see for real is Haloquadratum – another bacterium, noone’s quite sure why but the cells are tiny, flat and completely square. They grow in big sheets like postage stamps

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