Characteristics of virophages and giant viruses

Five years after being discovered in 2003, some giant viruses were demonstrated to play a role of the hosts for virophages, their parasites, setting out a novel and yet unknown regulatory mechanism of the giant viruses presence in an aqueous. So far, 20 virophages have been registered and 13 of them have been described as a metagenomic material, which indirectly impacts the number of single- and multi-cell organisms, the environment where giant viruses replicate.