On multiple occasions viruses that were
never talked about suddenly gained national headlines because of
their rapid increase in prevalence and high mortality. While these
pseudo-new viruses are taking many lives researchers are scrambling
to definitively characterize the virus and conduct research for a
vaccine. Often times it is too late and it is behavioral
interventions that contain the disease. There is a big push to end
this cycle of retrospective virus research and to discover these
viruses with outbreak potential before they actually cause one so
measures can be implemented to reduce impact or possibly prevent one
form ever occurring. This is the goal of Global Virome Project. This
project has proposed the cataloging of nearly all of the unknown
viruses undiscovered in nature around the world. There is an
estimated 1.3 million undiscovered viruses around the world and the
planner of the Viral Genome project estimate it would cost 3.4
billion to locate and gain preliminary data on all of the viruses.
This is lofty price tag is why they want to increase collaboration
and have many stakeholders in the project.
-Vander Harris
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