Medieval manuscripts are "biological time capsules" for deadly sheeppox virus
Sheeppox is a highly contagious, often fatal viral disease that was largely eradicated from much of European livestock in the 20th century. But there is still the occasional regional outbreak, such as the one that afflicted many flocks of sheep in Greece last year. In order to reconstruct how the virus has evolved over the last 3,500 years, scientists extracted and sequenced sheeppox DNA preserved in the animal skins used for the parchment of numerous medieval manuscripts. They reported their fi
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