FIELD 01Mimivirus was once mistaken for a bacterium, which is a useful warning label for assumptions.
FIELD 02Its particle and genome are so large that it helped make giant viruses impossible to ignore.
FIELD 03The 1.2 megabase genome carried a gene repertoire that looked far less streamlined than textbook viruses.
FIELD 04It still depends on amoebae, but it widened the boundary of what a virus could look like.
FIELD 05The specimen is not a fourth-domain claim. It is a reminder that microbes keep changing the categories.
Mimivirus made the word virus feel too small for the evidence.