Researchers discover 130,000 new viruses, giving us a new way to watch for emerging pathogens
8:39
A team including Canadian computational biologist Artem Babaian discovered 130,000 new RNA viruses by searching previously unexamined global databases of genetic material. RNA viruses include the ones that cause COVID, Ebola, measles, mumps, polio, influenza and the common cold. This work means we know of about nine times as many RNA viruses as we did before, and the team hopes this demonstrates a new way to detect potentially dangerous viruses in the future. The research was published in the journal Nature.