A 50,000-year-old virus that has been trapped deep within the Siberian permafrost has been brought back to life by a team of scientists.
More than a dozen prehistoric viruses were found by researchers for he French National Centre for Scientific Research, who made the discoveries while digging into ice cores deep underground in Siberia.
The viruses, which have been preserved in the ice for tens of thousands of years, are now being revived. One such virus is called Pandoravirus yedoma, which originated in the bodies of permafrost-preserved mammoths, wooly rhinoceros, and prehisotirc horses.
This isn't the first time scientists have discovered ancient viruses within the frosty ecosystem. Back in 2014, the same researchers found a 30,000-year-old virus trapped in the permafrost and found that, after all that time, it was still able to infect organisms.
Now, with the 13 new viruses in hand, scientists are thawing them out to assess their impacts on public health. However, the find raises a very real and worrying threat to humans. As the permafrost melts and thaws, the ice releases the chemicals and microbes that were trapped there.
This is happening more because of climate change and could include releasing more ancient viruses we know nothing about. The study’s author wrote: “Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect.
“Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times.” These "zombie viruses" could be potentially dangerous to humans, the researchers warned, and some have already claimed lives.
In 2016, one child died and dozens of people were hospitalised after an anthrax outbreak in Siberia. Officials believe the infection was due to a heatwave that thawed permafrost and unearthed a reindeer carcass that had been infected with anthrax decades ago. About 2,300 reindeer died in the outbreak.
Researchers were confident that the viruses they uncovered this time would pose a ‘negligible’ risk but warned that might be the case in the future. But they cautioned that the ‘risky’ search for viruses found in the remains of prehistoric animals like mammoths, woolly rhinoceros or horses, frozen in the ice, was a different story altogether.
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