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Researcher found giant viruses outside the entrance to her workplace

The discovery could be important in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

Researcher in a red jacket crouches beside a pond outside a building in Breivika, Northern Norway.

Juliana Tatara has searched for giant viruses throughout Northern Norway, but it was just outside the entrance to her workplace that she actually found what she was looking for.

(Photo: Jan Fredrik Frantzen / UiT)

Jan Fredrik Frantzen Jan Fredrik Frantzen Communications Adviser

Presented by: Presented by: UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Published 9 November 2026 - 00:01

Giant viruses are 'the next big thing' in PhD student Juliana Miranda Tatara’s field of research.

But before you start imagining viruses the size of cars and a new American disaster film, you can relax. Fortunately, they are completely harmless to humans.

These viruses are still tiny organisms, but they are giant compared with other viruses, such as the coronavirus.

Giant viruses can actually be the same size as some small bacteria, which in turn are much larger than ordinary viruses.

Could be an important discovery

What makes the search for, and research into, giant viruses particularly exciting is their potential to become a new weapon in the fight against antibiotic resistance.

“We know that giant viruses exist in many places and interact with many other microorganisms. We therefore expect to find proteins that affect bacteria in ways that differ from the antibiotics we have today. This could open up new possibilities for combating antibiotic resistance,” explains Juliana Tatara.

Giant viruses have enormous genomes containing unique proteins. A genome is the total amount of genetic material (DNA) in an organism. It contains all the information needed to create and maintain an organism throughout its life.

Researchers do not yet know what these proteins do, but they could lead to important new discoveries.

A woman holds a clear laboratory bottle of water outdoors, with greenery and trees behind her. — It was in a water sample like this that Juliana Tatara found what she was looking for: giant viruses.

A piece of detective work

As part of her research, Tatara is searching for giant viruses and their secrets.

Researchers have found them in many places around the globe, from Siberia to the Amazon, and from the Barents Sea to Antarctica.

But we still know very little about them. And finding them is not exactly easy. The challenge is that you cannot simply take a water sample and start counting viruses.

“Giant viruses leave genetic traces in water samples, and those are the traces we are looking for. It is almost like searching for footprints. It can be real detective work,” she says.

This particular detective found the traces she was looking for just outside her own workplace, the Norwegian College of Fishery Science (NFH) at UiT.

She is now working to find out how effective giant viruses are against bacteria, and whether it is worth investigating their secrets further.

“So far, it looks really promising,” says Tatara.