Monday, March 3, 2014
A team of French researchers have discovered an ancient virus buried deep in the Siberian permafrost, untouched for 30,000 years. Though microscopic, it is a so-called "giant virus," much larger than normal specimens and more genetically complex. James Van Etten, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln plant pathology who is an authority on viruses, edited the study led by Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel of Aix-Marseille University in Marseille, France.