Living Viruses!!

I came across a very interesting article in Nature News that says "'Virophage' suggests viruses are alive"..

For starters viruses are defined as infectious particle with genetic material wrapped with a protective protein cover. They have no machinery to sustain life like activities unless they invade a host cell. They eventually take over the host cell and start making copies of their genome quickly and breakout of the host cell to invade fresh cells.

Interestingly the virophage is called as 'sputnik' based on the name of the man made satellite. The giant virus that is sickened by this virophage is a giant virus named 'Acanthamoeba polyphaga' mimivirus(for mimicking microbe). This virus crossed the bounadary between the viruses and cellular organisms. Another strain of this virus was isolated from the cooling tower in Paris called as 'mamavirus' because it seemed slightly larger than mimivirus.

Mamavirus when infects its host amoeba it produces viral particles using the host machinary like a factory. But when these mamavirus is coinfected with the satellite virus it produces less virulent deformed viral particles something similar to a sick viral particle. This phenomenon has drawn considerable attention currently that a virus can co-infect another virus.