Ebola and Marburg are Millions of Years Old – and in rodent genomes
Ebola and Marburg are 16 to 23 million years old, not thousands of years old as once thought, according to a recent PeerJ paper.
The new research also indicates that while Ebola and Marburg are both filoviruses, they diverged from each other millions of years ago. This means they may be less alike than thought, which could impact research on therapies.
This is of considerable interest, said Robert Gifford, senior research fellow at University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research. An expert in viral evolution, he was uninvolved in the PeerJstudy. While Gifford long suspected Ebola was ancient, he didn’t know Ebola and Marburg diverged so long ago.
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