Mamavirus

Mamavirus is a large and complex virus in the Group I family Mimiviridae. The virus is exceptionally large, and larger than many bacteria. Mamavirus and other mimiviridae belong to nucleocytoplasmic large DNA virus (NCLDVs) family. Mamavirus can be compared to the similar complex virus mimivirus; mamavirus was so named because it is similar to but larger than mimivirus.

==Discovery== Mamavirus was first reported in September 2008. Like mimivirus, mamavirus was isolated from an amoeba in a cooling tower. The mimiviridae were not discovered until recently because of their large size, as when filtered the mimiviridae stay with the similarly-sized bacteria. This led scientists to believe they were also bacteria. Mimivirus was first isolated in 1992 when scientists were looking for the cause of a pneumonia outbreak in Bradford, UK. Due to its size it was named Bradfordcoccus and put in a freezer with scientists thinking it was a bacterium. A decade later, Jean-Michel Claverie and Didier Raoult discovered “Bradfordcoccus” was no bacterium when they tried to digest the cell wall with no success. Deciding to take a different route they looked at it under an electron microscope. They were surprised to find that it looked like a giant iridovirus, which are icosahedral viruses that infect insects, fish, and frogs. Knowing this paved the way for the discovery of mamavirus because scientists knew to look for other giant viruses.