‘Zombie viruses’ feared to lurk in frozen prisons that climate change could set loose

In their aforementioned previous works, the team showed both that a 30,000-year-old specimen of pithovirus could be revived and that it remained infectious; and that mollivirus, once defrosted, was capable of infecting an amoeba.

The new study follow-up the same protocol. For safety reasons, the researchers only collected so-called giant viruses — those 200–400 nanometres in diameter — which can only affect amoeba, rather than humans or any other creatures.

Alongside successfully reviving the viruses and demonstrating that they were still capable of infecting amoeba, the team also subjected the permafrost in which they were found to radiocarbon dating.

This revealed that the viruses had all been in a dormant state for between a whopping 27,000 and 48,500 years.

Article source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1745608/zombie-virus-frozen-permafrost-thawing-climate-change-amoeba-risk-health