Viral News
French Scientists Revive A ‘Zombie Virus’ Trapped Under A Frozen Lake In Russia For 50,000 Years
French Scientists Spark Fear Of Another Pandemic After Reviving A ‘Zombie Virus’ Trapped Under A Frozen Lake In Russia For 50,000 Years
French scientists have sparked fears of yet another pandemic after reviving a “zombie virus” that had been trapped under a frozen lake in Russia for a record 50,000 years.
“The situation would be much more disastrous in the case of plant, animal, or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus,” reads the “viral” study, which has yet to be peer-reviewed.
The new research was helmed by microbiologist Jean-Marie Alempic from the French National Centre for Scientific Research, Science Alert reported.
View this post on Instagram
According to the preliminary paper, global warming is causing vast swaths of the permafrost — permanently frozen ground covering one-quarter of the Northern Hemisphere — to irreversibly thaw. This has had the alarming effect of “releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years” — including potentially harmful pathogens.
“Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times,” the researchers write.
Aix-Marseille University professor Jean-Michel Claverie, co-author of the study, issued a warning to medical authorities about the lack of significant updates on “live” viruses in permafrost since original studies in 2014 and 2015, the Sun reported.
“This wrongly suggests that such occurrences are rare and that ‘zombie viruses’ are not a public health threat,” the research team wrote in their findings.
You must be logged in to post a comment logged in Login