Discovery of 40,000-year-old viruses in the Himalayas – | RCO News Agency

According to RCO News Agency, citing Interesting Engineering, a research in Nature Geoscience Journal shows that these viruses were discovered primarily because of a part of a viral DNA in the center of the ice. The ice in the tank was collected from the Guliya glacier located in Tibet.

Researchers are likely to analyze the DNA of these ancient viruses and determine how the viruses adapt to climate change. Xi Ping Zhang, one of the researchers of this research, announced in a statement that not much activity has been done in this field so far. According to him, the connection between viruses and macro-scale changes in the Earth’s climate has not been investigated yet.

According to him, the ice related to the glacier is valuable. In the mentioned research, it is mentioned that the viruses belong to 9 different time horizons from 3 cold to hot cycles during the last 41 thousand years.

Samples were collected from the ice core of Golia Glacier, which is 4 miles above sea level. Siberia has long been home to ancient viruses. Some researchers have claimed that these viruses are likely to infect humans because the world’s ice is melting due to climate change.

This discovery is related to the way ancient viruses adapted and evolved to climate change. Researchers have noticed that some types of viruses found in ice cores belong to about 11,500 years ago.