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Earth Science

Long-Dormant Viruses Are Now Waking Up After 50,000 Years as Planet Warms (yahoo.com) 171

This week Bloomberg explored so-called "zombie viruses" — that is, long-dormant microbes which they call "yet another risk that climate change poses to public health" as ground that's been frozen for "milleniums" suddenly starts thawing — for example, in the Arctic, which they write is warming "faster than any other area on earth." With the planet already 1.2C warmer than pre-industrial times, scientists are predicting the Arctic could be ice-free in summers by 2030s. Concerns that the hotter climate will release trapped greenhouse gases like methane into the atmosphere as the region's permafrost melts have been well-documented, but dormant pathogens are a lesser explored danger. Last year, virologist Jean-Michel Claverie's team published research showing they'd extracted multiple ancient viruses from the Siberian permafrost, all of which remained infectious...

Ways in which this could present a threat are still emerging. A heat wave in Siberia in the summer of 2016 activated anthrax spores, leading to dozens of infections, killing a child and thousands of reindeer. In July this year, a separate team of scientists published findings showing that even multicellular organisms could survive permafrost conditions in an inactive metabolic state, called cryptobiosis. They successfully reanimated a 46,000-year-old roundworm from the Siberian permafrost, just by re-hydrating it...

Claverie first showed "live" viruses could be extracted from the Siberian permafrost and successfully revived in 2014. For safety reasons his research focused only on viruses capable of infecting amoebas, which are far enough removed from the human species to avoid any risk of inadvertent contamination. But he felt the scale of the public health threat the findings indicated had been under-appreciated or mistakenly considered a rarity. So, in 2019, his team proceeded to isolate 13 new viruses, including one frozen under a lake more than 48,500 years ago, from seven different ancient Siberian permafrost samples — evidence to their ubiquity. Publishing the findings in a 2022 study, he emphasized that a viral infection from an unknown, ancient pathogen in humans, animals or plants could have potentially "disastrous" effects.

"50,000 years back in time takes us to when Neanderthal disappeared from the region," he says. "If Neanderthals died of an unknown viral disease and this virus resurfaces, it could be a danger to us."

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Long-Dormant Viruses Are Now Waking Up After 50,000 Years as Planet Warms

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  • by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @05:28PM (#63927233)

    But OK. I need some new fears as the old ones are wearing thin.

    • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @05:39PM (#63927251)

      But OK. I need some new fears as the old ones are wearing thin.

      Considering these are ~50,000 year old viruses, we humans may not have been exposed to them or, if we did, only in isolated communities. Any resistance or immunity may not exist in the wider population. Should they make their way toward densely populated areas, who knows how things will go.

      This isn't fearmongering. This is an objective assessment of what might happen since we don't know how current human bodies would react to an ancient virus.

      • by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

        > Considering these are ~50,000 year old viruses, we humans may not have been exposed to them

        Are you one of those people that think humans have only been here 6 thousand years?

      • Considering these are ~50,000 year old viruses, we humans may not have been exposed to them or, if we did, only in isolated communities.

        True, but it is not at all clear to me why a 50,000-year-old virus that did not manage to spread widely back then would be a bigger risk to us now than a mutation of a modern virus. Afterall, our ancestors were exposed to it, survived, and developed immunity and while that immunity has probably waned considerably (depending on how different the virus is to its modern offspring) we at least know that without any modern medicine, it did not wipe us out. New mutations come with no such guarantee.

        • Considering these are ~50,000 year old viruses, we humans may not have been exposed to them or, if we did, only in isolated communities.

          True, but it is not at all clear to me why a 50,000-year-old virus that did not manage to spread widely back then would be a bigger risk to us now than a mutation of a modern virus. Afterall, our ancestors were exposed to it, survived, and developed immunity and while that immunity has probably waned considerably (depending on how different the virus is to its modern offspring) we at least know that without any modern medicine, it did not wipe us out. New mutations come with no such guarantee.

          It's very unlikely that any virus, old or new, will "wipe us out". If our immune systems and genetic variation weren't pretty good at preventing complete destruction, we wouldn't be here.

          However, that's not to say there couldn't be plenty of viruses out there, ancient and new, that could wipe out, say, 10% of us. Even at its worst, COVID only killed less than one percent of those it infected, and the majority of those deaths were among the unproductive elderly population, and look at what that did to us.

      • by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Monday October 16, 2023 @06:53AM (#63928303)

        Remember what happened to natives when spaniards first came to the new world?
        Population exposed to new pathogens. Pretty much wiped out entire civilizations (thinking Casarabe) within 30 years. Without ever having been directly contacted by the Spanish.

      • Should they make their way toward densely populated areas, who knows how things will go.

        Like if someone goes and digs them up then reanimates them to wave around saying "look, scary"?

      • Native Americans were isolated for 10-15 thousand years. It is estimated that 95 percent of the indigenous populations in the Americas were killed by infectious diseases during the years following European colonization.

        So yeah. Virus that have been dormant for 50k years could cripple civilization as we know it. Or maybe they won't. The kicker is we can't really do much about it at this point. Its always been a threat and always will be as long as we're all on the same planet and have fast intercontinental t

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Stuff like this has happened. Pretty recently as well - in 2016 an anthrax attack killed herds of reindeer and humans in Siberia. There hadn't been an attack for nearly a century.

          What happened was the permafrost melted and basically reactivated the anthrax that had lied dormant in the ice.

          With the permafrost melting, who's to know what's going to happen as dead animals and other things get uncovered and defrost.

          The danger is that the virus or spore or whatever fails to infect humans, but successfully infect

    • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @05:46PM (#63927263)

      As a follow up, these viruses existed right around the time humans almost went extinct [businessinsider.com]. Guess what one of the ideas behind this near-extinction event is. A catastrophic spread of a disease.

    • by Bumbul ( 7920730 )
      You are confusing them with Netherlanders, who, BTW, got their flood problem sorted out as well.
  • No worries (Score:2, Offtopic)

    The 5G mind control implants have got this covered.
  • by a5y ( 938871 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @05:46PM (#63927261)

    They successfully reanimated a 46,000-year-old roundworm from the Siberian permafrost, just by re-hydrating it...

    This reads like a halfway between "patch it up with some frog DNA, job's a good one!" fiction and Alexander Fleming forgetting to cover the jars properly.

    "Oh crap, I spilled my" + (BRANDED PRODUCT GO HERE) + "all over the ancient Siberian" + (MOVIE MONSTER TO BE DECIDED BY DISNEY MARKET RESEARCH) + "I better flush it down the toilet so the boss doesn't + "(CONSEQUENCES TO BE DECIDED BY TARGET AGE RATING).

    Coming soon: SEWERSAURUS (working title, final title to be decided).

    Almost writes itself.

    Oh, right potentially defrosting infectious microbes.

    Yeah. Uh. That's fucking bad.

    • "Coming soon: SEWERSAURUS (working title, final title to be decided)."

      Japanese title: "Nemato Desu Ka?"

      1 Roundworms escape laboratory, as they do
      2 Drinks some of the koolaid issuing from Fukushima
      3 ...
      4 Tokyo!

  • TV version anyway.

    Too bad the following seasons stayed with the military plots. Exploring the steps needed to restore some semblance of civilization would have been more interesting.

  • I dunno. I'm not even remotely close to being an expert in anything this relates to but it seems to me that if any of these virus' were super successful amongst mammals they'd still be in active circulation. If the only place they currently exist is under ice they cant have been all that effective in spreading.

    • Depends on how the virus died off; A virus that kills everybody it infects tends to be self-limiting if travel isn't really available.

      • Depends on how the virus died off; A virus that kills everybody it infects tends to be self-limiting if travel isn't really available.

        Then all the fossilized bodies should be a clue.

      • by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Seems like pretty low odds, a virus that is both severe enough to where we need to worry about it today while at the same time being not so successful that it makes it out of regional status at a time where medicine does not exist.

        • That's the thing with modern travel, even something as deadly as ebola could spread out of containment if care isn't taken, whereas in, say, the colonial period it'd never have a chance to get beyond a short bit of village hopping.
      • Depends on how the virus died off; A virus that kills everybody it infects tends to be self-limiting if travel isn't really available.

        Or, as seems to be the case, it lies dormant, frozen the in the ice/permafrost, etc... until reawakened on a far more populated, warming planet at a time when very fast travel far and wide is readily available...

    • You're not wrong, but they do provide an interesting wrinkle in terms of hybridization. Back crossing modern flu with a successful but long past flu that thaws out could yield something on par with 1918 influenza in the same manner that that particular strain resulted form crossing human flu with swine flu. The longer they circulate, the more the most successful viruses tend towards being less deadly (or at least, less immediately deadly), so there could be relatives of fairly benign viruses that are more
  • Who would have thought "The Thing" was actually a documentary.
  • If it's a pathogen for which we have had no similar exposure, our immune system .. especially our adaptive immune system .. will destroy it. Collectively, our B-cells carry target information for all possible molecular structure pieces that are not our own. We don't need to have seen a pathogen to destroy it. The pathogens that are most deadly to humans are the ones that have adapted to our or mammalian immune systems and THEN acquire a slight mutation by which they are similar enough to existing friendly n

    • This is kind of perpendicular to how pathogenesis occurs. Rabies or plague don't kill you because they're particularly great at hiding from your immune system, they just kill you faster than your b cells can ramp up to effective levels.
      • Re:Opposite is true (Score:5, Informative)

        by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @09:34PM (#63927655)

        False. Rabies and plague have advanced mammalian immune evasion genes. Rabies can even RE-PROGRAM macrophages. See below references.

        Reference for rabies reprogramming macrophages: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
        Reference (for rabies generic immune evasion): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]

        Reference for plague evading the immune system: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]

        • It is rare for a rebuttal on Slashdot to contain detailed technical references, thank you for the effort post! I think, though, that as you note they are using a mouse model in the plague study that the differences between mice and humans is greater than 50k of normal genetic drift is likely to have introduced between whenever the theoretical frozen pathogens were frozen and now. To support your idea, though, we do see blood type distribution effected by historical disease so even a deadly frozen pathogen
    • Ok, where should I start... I won't. I'll just ask where the hell you got that idea from?

  • ... the planet was in the middle of its last ice age. The Arctic and Siberia were buried under ice. What exactly was available to host these viruses? Perhaps some extremophile bacteria tolerant of the cold. But not necessarily something mankind would have to worry about. Either now or in the past.

  • will get stomped by the modern ecosystem. They were frozen while modern biology clocked in 50,000 years of extra immune system evolution. They probably wouldn't even give us a cold.

    Any small creatures from 50,000 years ago would get immediately eaten by modern predators.

    Siberian tigers would manage to take down a few humans and then their heads would be stuffed and mounted in museums.

    Jurassic park is fun and all, but if the dino's came back, there would barely be enough time for them to get hunt
    • by a5y ( 938871 )

      Based on what? "Trust me guys, I know. I just KNOW" or something more? The notion that how long ago an organism lived is a measure of it's ability or inability to impact modern ecology is just baseless speculation.

      If you insist on treat organisms visible to the human eye as a suitable analogy for microbes (WHY???), then fine: Take a look at how effective a species like crocodile or alligator is at preying on animals today and then look up how little they've evolved in a long, long time. What even is a moder

      • OK.. but then you're speculating too. If we succumbed to fear of the unknown, the human species would probably either still be in Africa or most likely extinct. Our best move seems to be to investigate and characterize these microbes.

        • by a5y ( 938871 )

          OK.. but then you're speculating too.

          Saying I'm speculating too is facile because speculation with an assertion is not comparable to speculation without an assertion.

          "This will..." is prophesy. "If..." is not.

          If we succumbed to fear of the unknown, the human species would probably either still be in Africa or most likely extinct. Our best move seems to be to investigate and characterize these microbes.

          Sure, OK. Broadly we agree.

      • Hm. You seem very angry about what I wrote, for some reason, but the very next thing you do is to point out how badass, lethal and tough-to-kill the current organisms are.

        Which is, um, sort of exactly my point. Anything currently extinct that wakes up from a long ice nap is gonna be a b-lister compared to the world we live in.
        • by a5y ( 938871 )

          Anger and disdain aren't the same thing. If someone's doing something stupid? I hardly feel anger when I see someone playing "fuck around and find out", do you?

          the very next thing you do is to point out how badass, lethal and tough-to-kill the current organisms are.

          but the very next thing you do is to point out how badass, lethal and tough-to-kill the current organisms are.

          Which "current" organisms? The house cat and New Zealand invasive rat that are specific to the modern period that don't support your argument? Or do you mean the ones that haven't changed since before the time of the microbes discussed in the tha

    • What next? You going to tell us zombies aren't real, too? Bastard!

    • We're more protected by the reality that these viruses have to find hosts, and there needs to be a successful chain of hosts and mutation to get to us.

      Evolution does not conserve genes without selection pressures... So a gene that protected against a virus 50k years ago probably isn't still intact in human populations. But that frozen virus also hasn't been evolving to defeat the human immune system. In other words, it's an unknown risk, but not a huge one.

    • Well... no. That's not how evolution works.

      Evolution will preserve genes and traits that are useful and ensure propagation of the species. If that virus has been "gone" for 50,000 years, for that time span (and thus about 3000 generations), there would have been no benefit if that expression remained part of our genome. And something that is of no use will vanish.

      Any trait that is not required and uses up resources will vanish over time. This is why you have birds that cannot fly, sea mammals that can't wal

  • by McFortner ( 881162 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @06:37PM (#63927361)
    Odds are, any Neanderthal DNA that you might have has the overwhelming chance of being from those who survived these viruses. Those who died from them tended to leave less offspring to spread their genes.
  • I’m ordering twice as much ivermectin this time.

  • Hey wasn't this the plot to Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear?

  • Is there any demand for more nuclear fission power plants to reduce CO2 emissions and the global warming that results from same CO2 emissions? No? Okay then, I'm tuning out since it appears people still believe nuclear power to be a greater threat to human civilization than global warming. I'll take global warming seriously once the politicians elected to represent us take global warming seriously. To me taking global warming seriously means demanding the one source of energy with the lowest rate of hum

    • Well, it's that NIMBY problem, where should we put them? I mean, sure, they're way cleaner than most other conventional ways of generating power - until they're not.

  • Surely if they were thriving when it was warmer 50k years ago, doesn't that mean that the earth is currently cooler than it was 50k years ago? If so, fighting climate change is a colossal waste of time.

  • With a hint of luck that should kick that RTO to the curb for good.

  • It's....awake!

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