• Question: would your work help us find out about any future viruses that may damage us and a cure for them?

    Asked by abhishek to Katy on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Katy Brown

      Katy Brown answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      It could help us find out more about them. The ancient viruses I study are closely related to viruses like HIV which cause diseases now. Because they are ancient, we can see when the virus started, which animals it infected and when it stopped. This can be really useful, because the more we know about what these viruses did, the more we can figure out what viruses causing disease now, or future viruses, could do.

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