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Threat of outbreak from microbes trapped in permafrost for millennia raised by increased Siberian shipping activity
Humanity is facing a bizarre new pandemic threat, scientists have warned. Ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost could one day be released by Earth’s warming climate and unleash a major disease outbreak, they say.
Strains of these Methuselah microbes – or zombie viruses as they are also known – have already been isolated by researchers who have raised fears that a new global medical emergency could be triggered – not by an illness new to science but by a disease from the distant past.
As a result, scientists have begun planning an Arctic monitoring network that would pinpoint early cases of a disease caused by ancient micro-organisms. Additionally, it would provide quarantine and expert medical treatment for infected people in a bid to contain an outbreak, and prevent infected people from leaving the region.
Many pathogenic viruses have multiple species as hosts. For example Covid has a long list of species it infects from mink to deer as well a humans. In plants cucumber mosaic virus has over 1200 species it infects and is transmitted by more that 80 aphid species. These are the generally ones we should be the most concerned with emerging from the artic.
There are viruses that are limited to one species. The only reason we were able to eliminate smallpox was because it was human specific. If it had retained it’s ability to transmit via rodents (it evolve from infecting African rodents) it would likely still be around today.
I get what you say, but this does not account for the passage of time.
Over time, cells change. Proteins change. Except for conserved domains and functional parts. That only changes when it is no longer being used. But these aren’t always the regions used by viruses to infect a cell.
Even if the host has been around before grass, they change. The virusses you mention, maintained their ability to infect hosts along the evolution of all those aphids, rodents, humans and other species.
If they want to multiply the virusses in the lab, then they have to find a host the virus can infect. If not, then how likely is it really that ancient, highly specified pathogens can infect us?
I get that you can never predict nature with confidence, and you should always assume it can. But is this article not just fear-mongering? Trying to make it seem like a bigger threat than diseases and the dynamics of epidemics relevant to today? Like bird flu and the past’s reluctancy to develop vaccines against it? Or things that humans spread to other enviroments? Things that we can control our own part in as internet strangers?
In evolutionary time 20,000 years is not long. With a 25 year average generation time, that’s 800 generations. At an estimated average rate of mutation of 64 per generation that would be 51,200 mutations in that amount of time across 3,117,275,501 base pairs (female).
This might sound like a lot but only 2% of the human genome encodes proteins. So approximately 1,024 mutations to encoding proteins are possible across 62,345,510 base pairs. However we know that many changes to encoding proteins are conserved so the true number is less.
This is really a tiny number of mutations. It may take out a few viruses but most of them will still easily infect humans today. The difference between the mutation rate of viruses and our own generation time is why dynamic immune systems have evolved. This allows an organism to develop immunity to the rapidly mutating pathogens without waiting for changes to the DNA.
As for if this is fear mongering or not: It’s a real probability because of the degree of preservation we have found on carcases in the permafrost. As the permafrost melts these carcases are exposed and transmission is possible.
Honestly the largest worry would for something like influenza. Able to jump multiple species and recombine into novel new types. We also don’t know how long influenza has been around.
Wow that’s awesome! Well. In an interesting way. Guess nmclimate change has more disasters in store for us then.