Virus from mammoth wool and wolf’s intestine
The 50,000 year old virus is actually detailed in a new study, and another nine are thought to be possibly 10,000+ years old. Every virus was identified by researchers as being distinct from all other known viruses in terms of their genome.
Russian scientists first revived seven ancient viruses form the Siberia permafrost and replicated themselves in the lab. They have been conducting the research through the analysis of Ice Age- era animals that had been perfectly preserved in the frozen earth of Yakutia, Siberia.
While this virus was found beneath a lake other sources responsible for the findings were present in mammoth wool, and wolf’s intestines underneath tons upon tons of permafrost.
It was proven through research using single-cell amoeba cultures that these viruses still have the potential to be highly infectious and deadly. We are seeing more of these types of bacteria being released into the environment every day as global warming causes our world to warm up more and more.
Global warming and ancient virus
Global warming is in full swing it seems as the permafrost is melting close to the poles of this planet, earth. As a result, materials such as microbes that have been trapped in the ice for ages are now being discovered.
Scientist teams included researchers from Russia, Germany and France, want to study the emerging microbes and are working to research them in the permafrost wastes of Siberia. These 13 microbes are being termed “zombie viruses” and are thought to be, in some cases, over 50,000 years old.
https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/scientists-revive-48500-year-old-zombie-virus-buried-in-ice
Microbiologist Jean-Marie Alempic from the French National Centre for Scientific Research claims that these zombie viruses represent a significant danger to public health.
So they must be studied more closely to ensure that we are ready for any kind of threat they may eventually bring to civilisation. The research team behind that paper states:
“One quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is underlying by permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost, due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decompose into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect.”
Pandora virus is double edged
However in this day and age we seem to be in a better position to combat such eventualities compared to 100s of years ago, but as Covid and SARs have proven often they are a force to be reckoned with before we have them under control.
The researchers go on to say: “The situation would be much more disastrous in the case of plant, animal, or human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus.”
“It is therefore legitimate to ponder the risk of ancient viral particles remaining infectious and getting back into circulation by the thawing of ancient permafrost layers.”
This team of researchers are no strangers to such ancient Siberian viruses and their study. They had recently discovered another pandora virus, which was big enough to be visible using light microscopy.
The virus was labelled Pandora virus yedoma, a reference to its size and he permafrost environment it was discovered in. The team firmly believe there are many more types of virus out there we currently do now know about.
As ice that’s more and more will be released and become airborne, and possibly infect local animals/ humans. As we have little data on such threats currently we have no idea how contagious or deadly they could possibly be.
The team has said that the strains they targeted while studying the ancient virus are primarily capable of infecting amoeba microbes, so the biological risk of reanimating the virus they studied was negligible.
The fiend warrants further in depth investigation because of this reason. Virologist Eric Delwart from the University of California has plenty of experience when resuscitating ancient plant viruses.
He believes that these giant viruses are the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to discovering what lies beneath the permafrost. He said: “If the authors are indeed isolating live viruses from ancient permafrost, it’s likely that the even smaller, simpler mammalian viruses would also survive frozen for eons.”
Source: sciencealert.com
