SUPERCOMPUTER HELPS CANADIAN RESEARCHER UNCOVER THOUSANDS OF VIRUSES🦠THAT COULD CAUSE HUMAN DISEASE.

Chandrayee Roy Choudhury, Canada: Tracking pathogens that could spark future pandemics is no easy feat, but thanks to the help of a supercomputer, a Canadian researcher is among a team of scientists who've uncovered thousands of viruses that might one day pose a threat to humans.

Dubbed the Serratus Project, the international collaboration recently shared its findings in the journal Nature — which included the discovery of nearly 10 times more RNA-based viruses than were previously known, totalling more than 130,000 new species, all lurking in more than a decades' worth of publicly available genetic data.

Those types of pathogens are known for causing a wide variety of human diseases, ranging from COVID-19 to Ebola to the common cold. And this knowledge could "improve pathogen surveillance for the anticipation and mitigation of future pandemics," the team wrote in their paper, which was published at the end of January.

There were close to six million biological samples in total, equalling 20 million gigabytes of dat. 

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