LONDON (Reuters) -
Even viruses can go down with a viral
infection, French scientists reported on Wednesday, in a
discovery that may help explain how they swap genes and evolve
so rapidly.

A new strain of giant virus was isolated from a cooling
tower in Paris and found to be infected by a smaller type of
virus, named Sputnik, after the first man-made satellite.

Sputnik is the first example of a virus infecting another
virus to make it sick.

Bernard La Scola and colleagues from the Universite de la
Mediterranee in Marseille reported in the journal Nature that
Sputnik was able to achieve a remarkable degree of gene mixing
by “looting” genes from its host virus and other organisms.

Viruses are already known to infect and sicken bacteria but
this is the first example of a virus infecting one of its own
kind.

The finding may shed light on how viruses mutate so quickly
– a feature that can make them difficult to tackle with drugs
and vaccines.

It also lends weight to the argument that viruses are true
living organisms, despite not having cells.

“There's no doubt this is a living organism. The fact that
it can get sick makes it more alive,” said Jean-Michel
Claverie, a virologist at the CNRS UPR laboratories in
Marseilles.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; editing by Robert Hart)