Genome study reveals East Asian coronavirus epidemic 20,000 years ago

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2021-06-25 11:00:08

June 24, 2021

by Queensland University of Technology

An international study has discovered a coronavirus epidemic broke out in the East Asia region more than 20,000 years ago, with traces of the outbreak evident in the genetic makeup of people from that area.

Professor Kirill Alexandrov from CSIRO-QUT Synthetic Biology Alliance and QUT's Centre for Genomics and Personalised Health, is part of a team of researchers from the University of Arizona, the University of California San Francisco, and the University of Adelaide who have published their findings in the journal Current Biology.