PHOTO RELEASE: BIZARRE VIRUS-LIKE PARTICLES FOUND IN MARINE ORGANISMS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Editor's note: The accompanying slide appeared in the November 1993 issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series and the February 3, 1994, issue of Nature. If you reproduce the image, please use this credit line: Marcia Gowing, UC Santa Cruz. The following text serves as caption information.

SANTA CRUZ, CA--When Marcia Gowing first noticed the strange six- sided objects about ten years ago, she thought nothing of them. But now they have become a new marine mystery.

Gowing, an associate research biological oceanographer at the Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, was studying the innards of single-celled marine creatures called radiolarians. The creatures have an external silica skeleton and are related to amoebas. They store a record of their meals and wastes in small bubbles called vacuoles inside their bodies.

Gowing occasionally saw mysterious hexagons in high- magnification pictures of the vacuoles. Her curiousity was piqued recently when she stumbled upon a particularly rich sample--nearly half the radiolarians contained at least one of the unidentified objects.

At first glance, the hexagons look like viruses. There's only one catch--they are up to twelve times larger than most marine viruses. So what are they? If not viruses, they could be spores, new microorganisms, or specialized structures from larger organisms. Until she knows, Gowing dubs them "large virus-like particles," or LVLPs.

LVLPs are widespread. Gowing has found them in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Antarctic Oceans; from the surface to 2,000 meters deep; throughout the entire year; and in several kinds of tiny sea creatures. Because she sees LVLPs in vacuoles but nowhere else in the radiolarians, Gowing thinks the creatures ate the LVLPs rather than being infected by them. Becoming a meal for other organisms "could be a strategy by the virus, if it is a virus, to get distributed over a wide range of habitats," Gowing says. "Or it could be a dead- end if it gets digested."

To figure out whether LVLPs are actually monster viruses, Gowing plans to sequence their genetic material and compare it to that of known viruses. But after examining almost 300 of the enigmatic particles and talking to other scientists, Gowing finds it hard to conceal her suspicions. "You can tell I'm leaning toward them being viruses," she says.

The accompanying image is magnified 19,400 times and was taken using a transmission electron microscope. The LVLP is about 1/100th the width of a human hair.

Editor's note: You may reach Gowing at (408) 459-4789.

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