pithovirus

Noun

pithovirus (plural pithoviruses)

1. Any of the genus Pithovirus of giant viruses known from one species, Pithovirus sibericum, which infects amoebas.
   • Evolutionary biologists Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel, the husband-and-wife team at Aix-Marseille University in France who led the work, named it Pithovirus sibericum, inspired by the Greek word 'pithos' for the large container used by the ancient Greeks to store wine and food.2014 March 3, Ed Yong, “Giant virus resurrected from 30,000-year-old ice”, in Nature News
   • In this context, Pithovirus was initially spotted using light microscopy as ovoid particles (Fig. S1) multiplying in a culture of Acanthamoeba castellanii inoculated with a sample of Siberian permafrost from the Kolyma lowland region.2014 March 8, M Legendre et al., “Thirty-thousand-year-old distant relative of giant icosahedral DNA viruses with a pandoravirus morphology”, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences