Impakter
  • News
    • Culture
      • Art
      • Cinema
      • Entertainment
      • Literature
      • Music
      • Photography
    • Style
      • Architecture
      • Design
      • Fashion
      • Foodscape
      • Lifestyle
    • Society
      • Business
      • Foreign Affairs & Politics
      • Health
      • Tech
      • Science
      • Start-up
    • Impact
      • Eco Life
      • Circular Economy
      • COP26
      • CityLife
        • Copenhagen
        • San Francisco
        • Seattle
        • Sydney
      • Sustainability Series
        • SDGs Series
        • Shape Your Future
        • 2030: Dream or Reality
      • Philanthropy
        • United Nations
        • NGO & Charities
        • Essays
  • Environment
  • Sustainability Index
  • Partners
  • About
    • Team
      • Global Leaders
      • Contributors
      • Write for Impakter
        • Republishing Content
        • Permissions and Copyright
        • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Culture
      • Art
      • Cinema
      • Entertainment
      • Literature
      • Music
      • Photography
    • Style
      • Architecture
      • Design
      • Fashion
      • Foodscape
      • Lifestyle
    • Society
      • Business
      • Foreign Affairs & Politics
      • Health
      • Tech
      • Science
      • Start-up
    • Impact
      • Eco Life
      • Circular Economy
      • COP26
      • CityLife
        • Copenhagen
        • San Francisco
        • Seattle
        • Sydney
      • Sustainability Series
        • SDGs Series
        • Shape Your Future
        • 2030: Dream or Reality
      • Philanthropy
        • United Nations
        • NGO & Charities
        • Essays
  • Environment
  • Sustainability Index
  • Partners
  • About
    • Team
      • Global Leaders
      • Contributors
      • Write for Impakter
        • Republishing Content
        • Permissions and Copyright
        • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
Impakter
No Result
View All Result
Home Society Health

50,000 Years Later: Ancient ‘Zombie Viruses’ Resurface in Melting Arctic

Melting ice caps in Siberia reveal ancient virus time capsules frozen deep within them: curbing climate change is not only important to protect the environment, but also to protect humans from the dormant hostilities that lie within it

byLauren Richards
December 7, 2022
in Health, Science
arctic virus spillover
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Over the past few years, scientists have started finding ancient viruses frozen in the Arctic permafrost. But the question is, should we thaw them, revive them (although technically, they are not alive), and try to conduct further research on their biological significance in the lab? 

The secrets they hold about the past, as well as the possible benefits understanding their biology could bring to the future, is invaluable, for curiosity’s sake, but also scientific progress. 

What shouldn’t be ignored however, is that these entities are still relatively unquantified infectious agents, and could easily get out of hand pretty quickly. By delving too deep into the frozen past, we risk reintroducing viruses into the present global population with no easy way of containing them. 

The safe answer is that we should leave them alone in their frosty resting place. The world knows all too well what happens when virology is underestimated.  

But in reality, with global temperatures rising due to climate change, we may no longer have the luxury of choice in the matter. Melting Arctic and Antarctic ice is exposing a spectrum of ancient microorganisms to the 21st century, and it’s quite possible they could be hostile in nature. 

The most recent discovery of this kind came from a group of microbiologists and permafrost experts who recovered 13 “zombie viruses” from the ancient permafrost in Siberia. These viruses – which are still infectious – are estimated to have been frozen there for almost 50,000 years. 

Scientists Breathe Life Into 48,500-Year-Old 'Zombie Virus' Found Frozen In Siberiahttps://t.co/pPZMSAaAmb
Source: https://t.co/lIZ3uX6lDQ pic.twitter.com/xD3QkCKaaN

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) November 26, 2022

Siberian “Zombie viruses”

No, this is not a dream or the plot of a sci-fi movie, it is actually an emerging field of legitimate scientific research. 

But as we’ve established, viruses are not alive, instead they are essentially just inert strings of genetic material. They are only activated when they come into contact with a living breathing host. Once triggered, viruses are able to hijack the host’s cellular genetic machinery and energy sources to rapidly make copies of themselves and cause havoc, a.k.a. infection. 

Most of the time, once outside of a host, viruses are unable to persist for a very long time in the environment. But some specific species possess a more robust disposition and chemical stability that allows their viability to be preserved even after extremely long periods of time on ice. 

This is why the 13 prehistoric viruses – part of the pandoravirus, cedratvirus, megavirus, pacmanvirus, and pithovirus families – were able to survive for so long unscathed in the Siberian permafrost. 

Does that mean these viruses are still infectious? Yes. Could they cause an outbreak in humans? No, they only infect amoeba.

Then why should we be worried? Is there an arctic virus spillover risk?

Though the “zombie virus” species identified are not expected to be able to infect humans or animals, the group warns that the viability of these infectious agents, after spending so many years frozen deep within the ice, could still pose a pertinent risk to public health. 

Not because they themselves could cause infection in humans, but because there is no way of telling what other species of “zombie viruses” or other dangerous bacteria could also begin to surface as the ice melts. 

Bacterial infections are traditionally somewhat easier to treat than viruses, due to the abundance of antibiotics available. But the group of scientists warns we should not rely too heavily on these tried and trusted methods of killing bacteria, as many of the ancient bacterial species isolated from the permafrost have displayed surprising antibiotic resistance genes. 

The scientists hope their landmark discovery will serve as a warning to the world that in the midst of the climate crisis, it’s not just the future that we should be worried about, but also the past, because it too might come back to bite us.  

What did the world look like 50,000 years ago?

According to the scientists’ estimation of the viruses’ age, they would have been frozen in ancient Siberia since the end of the geological era known as the “Pleistocene” or “Last Glacial Maximum.” 

More commonly, we know this period of time as “The Ice Age.” 

Technically, this glacial period in Earth’s geological history is still occuring today, but at present we are within a warmer “interglacial” period of time where the climate is milder and the landscape more inhabitable. 

But 50,000 years ago, glaciers covered more of the earth’s surface area, meaning many animal populations were confined to lower-altitude forests and woodlands. Archaeologically speaking, it was in this period of time that prehistoric human populations developed early tools as part of the “Paleolithic” era. 

We know this period as “The Stone Age.”

During this time, the earth cooled dramatically and was subjected to repeated rounds of glacial freezing, forcing many species to extinction. The bodies of these dead animals, early humans and other organisms would have been frozen permanently into the ice as fossils. Similarly, even the tiniest bacterial and viral organisms that were present in the environment or within living hosts, would have also been preserved in the permafrost. 

Fast forward a few millennia, and we see that the inaugural tools our ancestors designed and built in the glacial ice age paved the first steps towards rapid global industrialisation that’s now melting our glacial ice in the digital age. 

Protecting the environment protects humans from the past 

You could say the climate crisis has now transitioned into a new phase, a phase where curbing emissions and making eco-friendly choices is helpful, but not the holistic answer. 

As recent reports reveal, the climate change-induced melting of the Arctic, as well as Earth’s other ice formations, is no longer entirely within our control. That’s because the melting process of these landscapes has in some cases been pushed past a critical “tipping point,” resulting in a self-perpetuating loop of endless thawing. 

As more of the ice melts, less sunlight is reflected by its white landmass, leading to a spiraling cascade of more warming and melting. Due to this effect, the Arctic has previously been shown to be warming at four times the rate of the rest of the planet. 

As this happens, organic matter and microbes that were once frozen in the ice get exposed to water and begin to decay, releasing more CO2 and further amplifying global warming. The end result is accelerated thawing of the permafrost.  

Not only does the reexposure of these once-frozen organisms to the elements contribute to gas release and climate change, but it also exposes life on earth to them.


Related Articles: Could the Rate at Which Glaciers Are Melting Cause the Next Pandemic? | The Bottom of the Arctic Is Blooming | The Next Virus “Hotspot”, the Arctic: Why a One Health Response is Needed | Earth ‘Likely’ to Exceed Dangerous Climate ‘Tipping Points’

Though exposure to emerging microorganisms is the main concern of the scientists who discovered the 13 frozen Siberian viruses, they say they are not concerned about these specific viruses causing an arctic virus spillover.

The group states that the evolutionary distance between humans and the amoeba host these viruses are able to infect is so vast, that isolation, culturing and experimentation should pose very little biosecurity risk in terms of transmission.

But what they do stress is a concern worth highlighting, is that just because these viruses don’t pose a threat to society, there have been other discoveries from deep within the ice that show human-infecting viruses could still exist there. 

A polar pandemic?

In 2012, scientists revived the smallpox virus from a 300-year old Siberian mummy in the same permafrost. Smallpox has been eradicated from the human population since 1980, but as global warming causes old victims of the disease to resurface from their frozen graves, scientists worry that reemergence of the virus, as well as other deadly species, could strike again. 

Similarly, a few years earlier, anthrax spores from infected animal burial grounds were also released from melting permafrost in Siberia, killing a 12-year-old boy, hospitalizing many others, and decimating local reindeer populations. 

Although along with these findings there have been growing murmurs in the epidemiology, virology, and environmental communities about the possible threat of further pandemics originating from the polar permafrost, there is still an abundant lack of reported scientific investigations being published. 

The current literature on resurgence of ancient frozen microorganisms could therefore be under-representative of the true threat to society they pose, as these outbreaks could be occurring in remote regions that go unreported. 

Scientists also warn human exposure to “zombie” microorganisms could be even further amplified as the planet warms, because milder Arctic conditions may promote migration to the area. 

As the world still reels from the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems the Arctic and Antarctic regions could emerge as the next big unprecedented virus hotspot.

In light of this, it seems that two of the world’s biggest present-day crises – Covid-19 and climate change – could be more intricately interwoven than first thought, making the risk of an arctic virus spillover a live possibility.

What’s more, given that the majority of infectious resurfacings have occurred in Siberia, the current multilateral geopolitical tension with Russia could make further research, cooperation and containment very challenging. 


Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed here by the authors are their own, not those of Impakter.com — In the Featured Photo: Inside a glacier. Featured Photo Credit: Eric Kilby/Flickr

Tags: ArcticClimate ChangepandemicresearchSiberiavirusZombie Virus
Previous Post

Should Twitter Have Moderated the Story About Hunter Biden’s Laptop?

Next Post

Energy Efficiency Is on the Rise: Why That Matters

Lauren Richards

Lauren Richards

Lauren is a research scientist turned writer, currently working as a Journalist at Impakter. As a graduate of Medical Biological Sciences, Lauren’s origins in science have taught her to be forever curious, which is reflected in her love for sharing new concepts, perspectives, and ideas. When not reading/writing about science, culture, art, and everything in between, Lauren can most likely be found in a coffee shop.

Related Posts

Our World Is Changing Ever Faster: What This Means For Our Survival
Impact

Our World Is Changing Ever Faster: What This Means For Our Survival

February 8, 2023
Biohacking: The Latest Health Craze, Health Hazard or Biowarfare?
Culture

Biohacking: The Latest Health Craze, Health Hazard or Biowarfare?

February 5, 2023
Coca Is Not Cocaine: The Truth Behind the Sacred South American Coca Leaf
Agriculture

Coca Is Not Cocaine: The Truth Behind the Sacred South American Coca Leaf

February 3, 2023
Next Post
Energy Efficiency Is on the Rise: Why That Matters

Energy Efficiency Is on the Rise: Why That Matters

Recent News

Are Electric Cars A Cure-All for Sustainable Mobility, Or Just One Part of A Larger Puzzle?

Are Electric Cars A Cure-All for Sustainable Mobility, Or Just One Part of A Larger Puzzle?

February 8, 2023
By Buying Your Smartphone Refurbished Rather Than New, You Can Save Over 77kg of CO2

By Buying Your Smartphone Refurbished Rather Than New, You Can Save Over 77kg of CO2

February 8, 2023
Our World Is Changing Ever Faster: What This Means For Our Survival

Our World Is Changing Ever Faster: What This Means For Our Survival

February 8, 2023
impakter-logo-light

Impakter informs you through the eco news site and empowers your sustainable lifestyle with its eco products marketplace.

Visit here IMPAKTER ECO for your eco products needs.

Registered Office Address

32 Lots Road, London
SW10 0QJ, United Kingdom


IMPAKTER Limited

Company number: 10806931

Impakter is a publication that is identified by the following International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is the following 2515-9569 (Printed) and 2515-9577 (online – Website).


Office Hours - Monday to Friday

9.30am - 5.00pm CEST


Email

stories [at] impakter.com

About Us

  • Team
  • Contributors
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • Partners

By Audience

  • Lifestyle
  • Green Finance
  • Culture
  • Society
  • Style
  • Impact

Impakter Platforms

  • Media
  • Index

© 2023 IMPAKTER. All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • ECO Products Shop – Try now!
  • Culture
  • Style
  • Society
  • Impact
  • Sustainability Index
  • About
    • Partners
    • Team
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy

© 2023 IMPAKTER. All rights reserved.

Impakter.com uses cookies to enhance your experience when visiting the website and to serve you with advertisements that might interest you. By continuing to use this site, you agree to our use of cookies. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.