There’s been a bit of a slack period for Shroud studies this autumn so far, so I thought I’d fill the space by flagging up a paper by Benjamin Minch, a Professor of Marine Ecology at the University of Miami.1 He has analysed some of the DNA data from the Shroud found by Gianni Barcaccia’s team2 with respect to viruses, identifying 2,765 viral sequences, including both DNA and RNA viruses.
Most were unsurprising, being associated with human handling, and some associated with a “high salinity preservation environment.” However, he also identified a “putative novel single-stranded DNA virus representing a new member of the recently described family Gandrviridae, which we have provisionally named Sindonivirus turinense.”
The Gandrviridae family was only identified in 2024, and consists only of eight other species, each in its own genus. Five were discovered in two springs in Florida, two came from American minnows and one from a New Zealand dragonfly. In general the viruses seem to be associated with fresh-water animals. What a ninth species putatively found associated with a north Italian reliquary might mean is anyone’s guess, but I suppose it enables Joe Marino to add virology to his “Plethora of Disciplines Used to Study the Shroud of Turin.”3
1). ‘The First Comprehensive Analysis of the Viruses Associated with the Shroud of Turin,’ Benjamin Minch, researchsquare.com, 2026
2). ‘Uncovering the Sources of DNA found on the Turin Shroud,’ Gianni Barcaccia et al., Scientific Reports, 2015
‘DNA Signatures Preserved in the Official 1978 Sample Collection of the Shroud of Turin,’ Gianni Barcaccia et al., Scientific Reports, 2026
3). ‘The Plethora of Disciplines Used to Study the Shroud of Turin,’ Joe Marino, academia.edu, 2022