A team of researchers from the French National Center for Scientific Research has recovered a virus trapped in permafrost, a frozen layer of soil that covers large areas of the polar regions or near glaciers, and has managed to restore its infectious capacity.
As these experts describe in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , radiocarbon dating of the soil sample where this agent was found revealed that it had been frozen in the Chukotka tundra, in eastern Siberia, where the average annual temperature it is around 13 degrees below zero, about 30,000 years.
That is, the virus, called Pithovirus sibericum , coexisted with Neanderthals and mammoths . After releasing it, the scientists observed how it replicated in a petri dish and managed to infect an amoeba, a single-celled organism.
Although this virus is large – it has 500 genes , while the flu virus, for example, only has 8 – it is harmless to animals, including humans.
However, the researchers warn that global warming or the exploitation of different resources in the Arctic regions could expose dangerous pathogens that remain imprisoned in the frozen soil.
