• Question: what was the oldest virus you have ever found

    Asked by laila13 to Katy, Ruth, PB, Paul, Lyn on 21 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by jordanfarmer, nishathchoudhury17.
    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Some of the viruses we’ve found were around way before humans even existed – one type of virus we study can be 145 million years old! This is about when the first mammals were around. These very old viruses are harder to find because while they are in our DNA they degrade a lot, so they look less like modern viruses, but we still find them sometimes.

    • Photo: Peter Balfe

      Peter Balfe answered on 21 Jun 2013:

      Katy knows way more about this than me!

    • Photo: Paul Waines

      Paul Waines answered on 25 Jun 2013:

      Wow Katy! I don’t really look at viruses, so I can’t really comment…

    • Photo: Ee Lyn Lim

      Ee Lyn Lim answered on 28 Jun 2013:

      The oldest virus I’ve personally encountered was called the Trojan Horse, and it infected our home computer when I was little 😉

      But no – I’ve never worked on viruses, so Katy’s answer is best!

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