Upending conventional wisdom, certain virus families are ancient
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 - 17:20
in Biology & Nature
Certain families of single-stranded DNA virus are more than 40 to 50 million years old, according to new research. The investigators found remnants of circoviruses and parvoviruses in the genomes of diverse vertebrates from fishes to birds and mammals that had been integrated into their genomes at different times from the recent past to more than 50 million years ago.