Hot springs at Lassen Volcanic National ParkWIKIMEDIA COMMONS, WALTER SIEGMUND
“It’s a mythological beast of a virus, but it actually exists,” virologist Ken Stedman told Nature of the virus hybrid his team discovered in a volcanic hot spring. Stedman’s team from Portland State University sequenced the DNA genome of the virus, and found that contained sequences encoding proteins from an RNA virus, according to their report published yesterday (April 19) in Biology Direct.
Boiling Springs Lake RNA–DNA hybrid virus (BSL RDHV, for short) is a single-stranded DNA virus with a circular genome, identified in acidic lake samples in Boiling Springs Lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park in California. The scientists realized they had something unusual when their characterization of viral sequences turned up the sequence for a protein from an RNA virus—encoded in its DNA. ...
