Jumping DNA rides aboard a virus, which targets a giant virus, which infects an amoeba, which infected a woman's eye

Earlier this year, a 17-year-old French woman arrived at her ophthalmologist with pain and redness in her left eye. She had been using tap water to dilute the cleaning solution for her contact lenses, and even though they were meant to be replaced every month, she would wear them for three. As a result, the fluid in her contact lens case had become contaminated with three species of bacteria, an amoeba called Acanthamoeba polyphaga that can caused inflamed eyes. The mystery of the woman’s inflamed eyes was solved, but Bernard La Scola and Christelle Desnues looked inside the amoeba, they found more surprises. It was carrying two species of bacteria, and a giant virus that no one had seen before—they called it Lentille virus. Inside that, they found a virophage—an virus that can only reproduce in cells infected by other viruses—which they called Sputnik 2. And in both Lentille virus ...