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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

02/12/22 22:03 PM IST

Scientists revive approximately 50,000-year-old ‘zombie virus’ from frozen lake in Russia

In News 
  • European researchers have raised concerns of yet another pandemic after resurrecting a 48,500-year-old ‘zombie virus’ from a frozen lake in Russia.
Zombie Virus 
  • 13 new pathogens have been characterized, what are termed ‘Zombie Viruses’, which remained infectious despite spending many millennia trapped in the frozen ground.
  • The virus emerged due to the thawing of permafrost as the global temperature is rising.
  • The new strain is one of 13 viruses, each of which possesses its own genome.
  • The oldest, dubbed Pandoravirus yedoma after the mythological character Pandora, was 48,500 years old, a record age for a frozen virus returning to a state where it has the potential to infect other organisms.
  • This has broken the previous record held by a 30,000-year-old virus discovered by the same team in Siberia in 2013.
Causes 
  • One-quarter of the Northern hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost.
  • Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect.
  • Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistoric times.
Source- DTE 

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