NEW YORK: A 30,000-year-old giant virus discovered deep in the Siberian permafrost is still functional and capable of infecting its host, researchers have found.
However, the new virus is not a threat to humans; it infected single-celled amoebas during the Upper Paleolithic, or late Stone Age.
Dubbed Mollivirus sibericum, the virus was found in a soil sample about 98 feet below the surface and is member of a new viral family, the fourth such family ever found. M sibericum is wider in diameter than the other giant viruses, at 600 nanometres versus 500.
It has a genome of 600,000 base pairs which hold the genetic instructions to create 500 proteins.