The world’s oldest known frozen and dormant virus has been revived in a French laboratory leading many to express concerns about the dangers of bringing to life ancient microbes. The virus was removed from the Siberian permafrost in Russia’s far east and is 48,500 years old, offering proof that viruses are incredibly hardy and capable of surviving indefinitely when they’re preserved in a frozen state.
Melting Siberian Permafrost in a Virus-Filled Pandora’s Box
This particular virus is actually one of nine different types of viruses that have been resuscitated from Siberian permafrost samples in recent years. That includes seven viruses resuscitated for this new study, and two other approximately 30,000-year-old viruses brought back to life by the same team of researchers from other samples taken in 2013. The youngest of these viruses was frozen 27,000 years ago.
As reported in the non-peer-reviewed journal bioRxiv, the 48,500-year-old virus has been named Pandoravirus yedoma , in reference to Pandora’s box. The virus was found in a sample of permafrost taken from 52 feet (16 m) below the bottom of a lake in Yukechi Alas in the Russian Republic of Yakutia.
The first-ever pandoravirus was one of the two viruses found in 2013, although that one was of a different type altogether. “48,500 years is a world record,” Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist at Aix-Marseille University in France and the lead author of the permafrost viral study, told the New Scientist .
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