In 1976 the International Committee on Taxonomy of Vi- ruses (ICTV) created the family Iridoviridae to encompass several different vertebrate and invertebrate viruses that did not fit into any of the other established groups. The unifying features of this new family were (1) polyhedral symmetry; (2) large (approximately 170 kilobase pairs), lin- ear, double-stranded DNA genomes; and (37) a cytoplas- mic site of replication. The name "iridovirus" was derived from the observa- tion that larvae infected with many of the insect viruses, as well as purified pellets of these viruses, glowed with a...
In 1976 the International Committee on Taxonomy of Vi- ruses (ICTV) created the family Iridoviridae to encompass several different vertebrate and inve...