Six 'zombie viruses' that are being unleashed on the world right now due to ... trends now

Six 'zombie viruses' that are being unleashed on the world right now due to ... trends now
Six 'zombie viruses' that are being unleashed on the world right now due to ... trends now

Six 'zombie viruses' that are being unleashed on the world right now due to ... trends now

The viruses have turned up in mammoth wool, Siberian mummies, prehistoric wolves, and the lungs of an Influenza victim buried in Alaska's permafrost.

And scientists say there's more to come.

An international team of researchers from institutions in Russia, Germany and France warns that 'the risk of ancient viral particles remaining infectious' has been underestimated.

Worse, these scientists now believe that 'the risk is bound to increase in the context of global warming, in which permafrost thawing will keep accelerating,' unleashing some diseases that had been trapped in the ice since prehistoric times.

Climate change risks unleashing more long-dead viruses, the researchers say, as 'permafrost thawing will keep accelerating.' Above, scientists examine a 14,300-year-old wolf-dog preserved by the Tumat permafrost since pre-historic times. These remains were found in 2015

Climate change risks unleashing more long-dead viruses, the researchers say, as 'permafrost thawing will keep accelerating.' Above, scientists examine a 14,300-year-old wolf-dog preserved by the Tumat permafrost since pre-historic times. These remains were found in 2015

The team — which includes experts in genomics, microbiology and geoscience, some of whom have been tracking these resurrected 'zombie' viruses for nearly a decade — published their findings in the journal Viruses last February.

Below are six long-frozen microbes that scientists have unearthed from the permafrost's quickly melting fossil record. 

Influenza

In the late 1990s, Swedish pathologist Dr. Johan V. Hultin found a cache of 1918 Influenza virus RNA in the lungs of a woman slain by the virus nearly 80 years prior.  

Dr. Hultin had been searching intentionally for Influenza samples that could help medical researchers better understand how to fight future pandemics. 

But his discovery was an early indication of just how easily deadly viruses could be preserved in arctic permafrost. 

Hultin, in collaboration with the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, exhumed the body of a large Inuit woman buried in a mass grave of Influenza victims near a remote village outside the town of Brevig Mission, Alaska.

Thanks to the permafrost, enough RNA from the Influenza virus was so well preserved that the researchers could sequence the entire 1918 strain's genome. 

But the discover was both a victory for medical researchers and dark omen of what other diseases might be frozen in time under the ice.

Thanks to the Alaskan permafrost, enough of RNA from the 1918 Influenza virus was so well preserved that researchers could sequence the entire pandemic strain's genome. Above, a colorized image of the 1918 Influenza virus taken by a transmission electron microscope

Thanks to the Alaskan permafrost, enough of RNA from the 1918 Influenza virus was so well preserved that researchers could sequence the entire pandemic strain's genome. Above, a colorized image of the 1918 Influenza virus taken by a transmission electron microscope

Pithovirus sibericum 

First dredged out of the Siberian permafrost in 2014, from 100 feet (30m) under the ground, the gigantic ancient virus Pithovirus sibericum is one of the few viruses visible under an ordinary, high school-style, light microscope.

At about 1.5 micrometers, P. sibericum is over seven-times the size of a modern human-infecting virus, which typically range from 20–200 nanometers.

French scientists with the National Centre of Scientific Research at the University of Aix-Marseille (CNRS-AMU) resurrected the 30,000-year-old zombie P. sibericum by exposing sacrificial amoebas to the virus.

'This is the first time we've seen a virus that's still infectious after this length of time,'  Professor Claverie of CNRS-AMU said at the time. 

As Claverie's co-author on a 2014 PNAS study about the virus, Chantal Abergel, told the BBC: 'It comes into the cell, multiplies and finally kills the cell. It is able to kill the amoeba - but it won't infect a human cell.' 

Although P. sibericum poses no clear and present danger to either people or animals, the researchers chose their amoeba 'canaries in the coalmine' as a way to test the future risks posed by undead pathogens emerging from the thaw. 

Along with their co-authors on the new study in Virus this year, Claverie and Abergel called this approach a 'decisive advantage' using amoebas as 'a specific bait to potentially infectious viruses.'

But just the fact that these viruses could be fully revived was a bad sign. 

'The ease with which these new viruses were isolated,' they wrote, 'suggests that infectious particles of viruses specific to many other untested eukaryotic hosts [including humans and animals] probably remain abundant in ancient permafrost.' 

While the 30,000-year-old P. sibericum virus poses no threat to humans, its present-day ability to kill ameobas portends that more deadly ancient viruses could revived. Above, an ultrathin section of a Pithovirus inside an infected amoeba (credit: Bartoli, Abergel, IGS and CNRS-AMU)

While the 30,000-year-old P. sibericum virus poses no threat to humans, its present-day ability to kill ameobas portends that more deadly ancient viruses could revived. Above, an ultrathin section of a Pithovirus inside an infected amoeba (credit: Bartoli, Abergel, IGS and CNRS-AMU)

Mollivirus sibericum

Frozen Mollivirus sibericum was found alongside those same 30,000-year-old Siberian permafrost samples

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