Human Tissue Preserved Since World War I Yields New Clues About 1918 Pandemic (sciencemag.org) 42
sciencehabit quotes Science magazine:
On 27 June 1918, two young German soldiers—one age 18, the other 17—died in Berlin from a new influenza strain that had emerged earlier that year. Their lungs ended up in the collection of the Berlin Museum of Medical History, where they rested, fixed in formalin, for 100 years. Now, researchers have managed to sequence large parts of the virus that infected the two men, giving a glimpse into the early days of the most devastating pandemic of the 20th century. The partial genomes hold some tantalizing clues that the infamous flu strain may have adapted to humans between the pandemic's first and second waves.
The researchers also managed to sequence an entire genome of the pathogen from a young woman who died in Munich at an unknown time in 1918. It is only the third full genome of the virus that caused that pandemic and the first from outside North America, the authors write in a preprint posted on bioRxiv.
"It's absolutely fantastic work," says Hendrik Poinar, who runs an ancient DNA lab at McMaster University. "The researchers have made reviving RNA viruses from archival material an achievable goal. Not long ago this was, like much ancient DNA work, a fantasy."
The researchers also managed to sequence an entire genome of the pathogen from a young woman who died in Munich at an unknown time in 1918. It is only the third full genome of the virus that caused that pandemic and the first from outside North America, the authors write in a preprint posted on bioRxiv.
"It's absolutely fantastic work," says Hendrik Poinar, who runs an ancient DNA lab at McMaster University. "The researchers have made reviving RNA viruses from archival material an achievable goal. Not long ago this was, like much ancient DNA work, a fantasy."
Re: Reviving? (Score:3)
Hahaha. Scaredy cat. You must be one of the fools afraid of vaccines too. We need research into these viruses or we would not be able to fight the virus. You cannot be against virus research and scared of vaccines at the same time.
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No it wouldn't. We're pretty good at making flu vaccines. One of the things you could do with an actual revived 1918 flu is do the antigenic studies to put it in the database, in case something similar ever starts spreading.
Not that anyone likely actually created an infectious version. They sequenced it.
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If the virus is ALREADY DEAD AND GONE, why do we need to revive it to fight it? We're literally engineering problems to solve.
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If the virus is ALREADY DEAD AND GONE, why do we need to revive it to fight it? We're literally engineering problems to solve.
For the same reason there are still smallpox viruses at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia and in Russia [cdc.gov]. Even though smallpox has been eradicated around the world, what if it came back? What if some nefarious person dug up bodies still infected with the virus and used it as a bio weapon? For the most part, almost no one after 1972 has been inoculated against smallpox. The ease with which people can travel across borders and around the world, imagine what would happen if just one person had the virus. If peop
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At least having the DNA sequence of the original could be helpful. Same with the Polio virus. Perhaps in the future there will be a more detailed tests that can analyze the viruses and get new information from them.
Re: Reviving? (Score:1)
The virology institute in Wuhan kept the current virus that causes COVID19 around without telling anyone, they then lost it, without telling anyone, they then destroyed all evidence and silenced all witnesses.
There will always be a government or scientist that *gasp* lies. The other thing you can do is develop a vaccine such as the Trump vaccines which are based on mRNA and target both viruses and their adaptations. For example an mRNA polio vaccine could have sequences that were common across all variants.
Re: Reviving? (Score:2)
They then destroyed all evidence and witnesses... so you know this because you are what, God? Just think about what you said and realize the logical hoops you have to jump to for your conclusion... wait what am I say, that requires critical thinking which is funny because again the outcome you propose requires a lack of critical thinking on those involved in this "mishap".
Re: Reviving? (Score:4, Interesting)
> Hahaha. Scaredy cat. You must be one of the fools afraid of vaccines too
This is silly. I'm fully vaccinated and have been since we were first eligible, but gain of function research is very plausibly responsible for this pandemic in the first place. We haven't found any wild animal reservoirs for this virus yet, after a long time searching, whereas we found them for MERS, etc. in a few months.
But we know that Wuhan was doing gain of function research and very well could have produced Covid-19 in humanized mice. I think that this article [medium.com] gives a pretty good overview, though it's perhaps over-protective of Fauci due to the author's friendship with him. That aside, I do not believe the more conspiratorial ideas that this was somehow deliberate. Rather, I see it more likely that this was either a lab leak or a researcher who got infected while researching bats and the relevant parties would've been unmotivated to investigate avenues that lead back to them.
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This article seems very convincing [thebulletin.org], although I admit it is beyond my ability to assess at a scientific level.
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Nature is finding a way!
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As in its now live and could spread? Its the whole gain of function testing that needs to be banned worldwide.
Reviving and "gain of function" are not the same thing. The latter is more like enhancing. I imagine they want to revive them in order to develop/test anti-virals and/or vaccines.
Re: Reviving? (Score:2)
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Without gain of function research we'd always be chasing the last variant nature created. And banning gain of function won't stop rogue states from doing it.
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Shouldn't we be prepared in case it comes up again? If nature can make it once, it can make it twice. In fact, given what we deserve it's probably preparing an even worse one, I mean nature bumped off the dinosaurs and they didn't even do anything.
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I dunno - a lot of those dinosaurs were rabid anti-vaxxers. And T-Rex were notorious for not washing their hands.
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Well, the big dinosaurs, anyway. My dinosaur feeder seems to have the usual crop of red-headed, red-bellied, downy dinosaurs. Plus the cardinals, titmouses (titmice?), etc, etc....
What, word didn't get to your neck of the woods that "birds" are actually dinosaurs?
Re: Reviving? (Score:1)
First off, birds and dinosaurs have a common ancestor but likely are not descended from dinosaurs. But assuming they are, it is pedantic. The T-Rex descendants did not become humming birds or something. The T-Rex line went extinct. My point is that nature has no problem eliminating entire species. I mean, if it gets rid on homo sapiens, is it consolation to you that other primates such as monkeys survive?
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if it gets rid on homo sapiens, is it consolation to you that other primates such as monkeys survive?
If I die it's not much consolation that other people live.
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birds and dinosaurs have a common ancestor but likely are not descended from dinosaurs
No [berkeley.edu], no [scientificamerican.com], and no [nhm.ac.uk].
Birds are dinosaurs. They are not descended from a common ancestor; their direct ancestors were what we know today as dinosaurs.
Saying that birds are not dinosaurs is like saying that humans are not hominids.
Yes fucking Reviving! (Score:5, Insightful)
And you should be banned from spitting out that shit:
Most dangerous things come from the wild not from the labs, this is done to study the material and find better and quicker ways to handle bio threats which is intrinsically important in a more and more crowded and interconnected world, currently occupied by 7*10^9 people and projected going up to 10*10^9 before starting to decline .. thus increasing the possibility of pandemic situations (ring a bell?)
And btw. the PCR tests which were used to detect Cov2 were developed also because various bio labs around the world studied CoV1.
Virus:
A virus is just a genome in a hull that needs a host to replicate.
The reviving is mostly repairing the genome and inserting it into empty virus hulls.
Dangerous things:
We use bio labs to handle and study things like Ebola to find a cure.
We go hunting wild animals and are in the danger of being infected.
We use deadly phosgen in our chemical plants to make every day plastics and meds (think about: chemotherapy).
We split atoms and some are that keen to still operate tschernobyl type reactors.
Do you want me to get started about anthrax which is still procured by USA and Russia as part of the bio weapons arsenal?
-> btw. Anthrax was made by nature
-> btw. SARS-CoV1 was made by nature
-> btw. SARS-CoV2 was made by nature
-> btw. MERS was made by nature
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Re:Don't let this one escape the lab, too. (Score:4, Insightful)
When the Black Plague came through Europe, people flayed their own backs in an attempt to slow God's pestilence.
When ebola came through Africa, they burned down clinics and attacked the Doctors Without Borders who brought the disease.
When corona came: see parent post.
been done before (Score:4, Informative)
See also "The Deadliest Flu: The Complete Story of the Discovery and Reconstruction of the 1918 Pandemic Virus." https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-1918-virus.html [cdc.gov]
If memory serves, a researcher contracted the 1918 flu and died. We are lucky this wasn't a Wuhan-like event.
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It's not just as simple as revival. (Score:1)
What Could Go Wrong : P (Score:2)
Any Tissue From Encephalitis lethargica Victims? (Score:4, Interesting)
At exactly the same time as the 1918 Influenza Pandemic there was another viral pandemic that killed millions of people (maybe 1 or 2, not 50-100). This one infected the nervous system and killed perhaps 10% of those who became ill. Some of the victims who survived became lifelong catatonics. One group of such people is discussed in Oliver Sack's book Awakenings. After spreading around the world with tens of millions infected, it disappeared in the 1920s. No one knows what type of virus it was.
I used to think (by inference) that Encephalitis lethargica was a weird presentation of the 1918 flu, as the progression of the two pandemics closely match - but in reality they were unrelated diseases.
If someone preserved a tissue sample from a Encephalitis lethargica victim perhaps we can find out what it was.
We still get the Spanish Flu (Score:2)