User:Zabb17/sandbox

Article Evaluation- Pandoravirus

• Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
  • Not everything in this article is relevant. There were multiple things that distracted me while reading this article. It mentions that genome size of Pandoravirus is 1.9- 2.5 magabases. This is not the best way to say this. I would use million because most people know this number. I think magabase is too technical.
• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
  • This article was neutral, although it was missing a lot of information.
• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
  • The best section of this article was the discovery part because it gave history to how they were discovered. However, we can add to this and mention why they are called pandoravirus.
• Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
  • One important information about pandoraviruses is that it infects amoebas, there is a link to this which describes what an amoeba is. They are single celled eukaryotes found mostly in fresh water, moist soil, moist vegetation, and humans. There is also a link to other giant viruses such as the mimivirus, magavirus, and phitovirus. The Wikipedia for magaviruses is very informative.
• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?
  • Article compares pandoraviruses to other giant viruses such as megavirus and mimivurus which all have appropriate references. The references are from nature website, Science journal, New York Times, The Age. There are however some articles that are missing DOI.
• Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
  • A lot important information is missing such as the life cycle of pandoraviruses. The distribution or where they are found, and how many cases were found. A better time line could be added to discuss when different giant viruses were discovered.
• Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?
  • There were a lot of suggestions for the author to make on this article. Some were fixes and some were not. Some of the suggestions were, to add the diameter size, include etymology, change the term genetic code to genetic structure, using the term pandoraviradie instead. the correct number of genes were not accurate, it needs a taxobox.
• How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?
  • Yes, it is part of wikiprojects viruses, microbiology and medicine.
• How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?
  • We talked in class about giant viruses not affecting humans. Pandoravirus was first discovered in contact lenses of a women who swam in a ocean. I would add if this virus is more found in humans or in nature.

Editing a reference

Pandoravirus, first announced in a 2013 paper, is a genus of giant virus with the largest genome size and second largest physical size of any known viral genus. Like the other very large viruses Mimivirus, Pithovirus and Megavirus, Pandoravirus infects amoebas, but its genome, containing 1.9 to 2.5 megabases of DNA, is twice as large as that of Megavirus, and it differs greatly from the other large viruses in appearance and in genome structure.

Although the capsid of Pithovirus is 50% larger in size, Pandoravirus has the largest genome among all known viruses.

Pandoraviruses have a double stranded DNA genome. They were first announce in a 2013 paper and they are a genus of a giant virus with the largest genome size of 2.5 million base pairs. They are the second largest in physical size of any known viral genus. Other giant viruses such as the Mimivirus, Pithovirus and megavirus, have a much smaller genome size. For example, Mimivirus, considered one of the largest giant viruse, has a genome size of 1.8 million base pairs. One feature that is different of pandoraviruses is the replication cycle. Pandoraviruses infect the amoebas, which are single celled eukaryotes. Pandoravirus inserts into the amoeba through phagocytic vacuoles, then fuses with the membrane vacuole of the amoeba. This leads to viral particles being released into the cytoplasm of the amoeba

Discovery[edit]

A team of evolutionary biologists from University of France, Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, found a sample of Pandovirus in a water sample collected from coast of Chile. Under the microscope, they observed the virus as a large dark spot that almost looked like a bacteria cell. The team and their colleagues began to search for more species of giant viruses. In fact, they found two different species of Pandoraviruses. One from Tunquen River in Chili, called Pandoravirus salinus. Second species found from a freshwater pond near Melbourne, Australia, called Pandoravirus dulcis.

The discovery of pandoraviruses, by a team of French scientists led by husband and wife team Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, was announced in a report in the journal Science in July 2013. Other scientists had previously observed the pandoravirus-like particles, but owing to their enormous size, they were not expected to be viruses. Patrick Scheid, a parasitologist from the Central Institute of the Bundeswehr Medical Service in Koblenz, Germany, found one in 2008, in an amoeba living in the contact lens of a woman with keratitis. Its development within the amoebal host was documented extensively. Unlike in other cases with such giant viruses, these microorganisms within Acanthamoebae were not mistaken for bacteria. The authors initially termed them "endocytobionts".

Mimivirus, a nucleocytoplasmic large DNA virus with a genome size of about 1.1 megabases, had been discovered in 1992 but not recognized as a virus until 2003. Megavirus, discovered in seawater off the coast of Chile in 2011, has a genome size of approximately 1.2 megabases.

The prior discovery of these viruses prompted a search for other types of large amoeba-infecting viruses, which led to the finding of two species; Pandoravirus salinus, found in seawater taken from the coast of Chile, with a genome size of ~2.5 megabases, and Pandoravirus dulcis, found in a shallow freshwater pond in La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, with a 1.9 megabase genome.

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