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MOSCOW – Russian state laboratory Vektor announced on Tuesday that it was launching an investigation into prehistoric viruses by analyzing animal remains recovered from melted permafrost.
The Siberia-based laboratory said in a statement that the goal of the project was to identify paleoviruses and conduct advanced research on the evolution of the virus.
The research in collaboration with the University of Yakutsk began with the analysis of tissues extracted from a prehistoric horse that is believed to be at least 4,500 years old.
Vektor said the remains were discovered in 2009 in Yakutia, a vast region of Siberia where remains of Paleolithic animals, including mammoths, are regularly discovered.
The researchers said they would also investigate the remains of mammoths, elk, dogs, partridges, rodents, hares and other prehistoric animals.
Maxim Cheprasov, head of the laboratory at the Mammoth Museum at Yakutsk University, said in a press release that the recovered animals had already undergone bacterial studies.
But he added: “We are conducting studies on paleovirus for the first time.”
Former center for the development of biological weapons in Soviet times, the Vektor laboratory in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia is one of only two facilities in the world to store the smallpox virus.
Vektor has developed a coronavirus vaccine, EpiVacCorona, which was licensed in October in Russia and is scheduled to begin mass production later this month.
Scientists say the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the world average, endangering local wildlife and releasing carbon stored in melting permafrost. – French Media Agency
