Scientists Revived Ancient 'Zombie

Viruses' Frozen For Eons in Siberia

ENVIRONMENT 25 November 2022 By DAVID NIELD

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Rapidly Melting Glaciers Are

As the world warms, permafrost is being exposed. (Tatiana Gasich/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
Releasing a Staggering Payload of
Unknown Bacteria
As the world warms up, vast tranches of permafrost are melting, releasing ENVIRONMENT 3 days ago
material that's been trapped in its icy grip for years. This includes a slew of
microbes that have lain dormant for hundreds of millennia in some cases. The Cause of Alzheimer's Could Be
Coming From Inside Your Mouth
To study the emerging microbes, scientists have now revived a number of
HEALTH 3 days ago
these "zombie viruses" from Siberian permafrost, including one thought to be
nearly 50,000 years old – a record age for a frozen virus returning to a state
WHO Ranks The Deadliest
capable of infecting other organisms.
Pathogens, Including The
The team behind the work, led by microbiologist Jean-Marie Alempic from the Mysterious 'Disease X'
French National Centre for Scientific Research, says these reanimating viruses HEALTH 3 days ago
are potentially a significant threat to public health, and further study needs to
be done to assess the danger that these infectious agents could pose as they
awake from their icy slumber.

"One quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is underlain by permanently frozen

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ground, referred to as permafrost," write the researchers in your privacy
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"Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic
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currently in preprint, with nine of them thought to be tens of thousands of
years old. The researchers established
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While the record-breaking virus was found beneath a lake, other extraction
locations included mammoth wool and the intestines of a Siberian wolf – all
buried beneath permafrost. Using live single-cell amoeba cultures, the team
proved that the viruses still had the potential to be infectious pathogens.
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We're also seeing huge numbers of bacteria released into the environment as
the world warms up, but given the antibiotics at our disposal it might be argued
they would prove less threatening. A novel virus – as with SARS-CoV-2 – could
be much more problematic for public health, especially as the Arctic becomes
more populated.

"The situation would be much more disastrous in the case of plant, animal, or
human diseases caused by the revival of an ancient unknown virus," write the
researchers.

"It is therefore legitimate to ponder the risk of ancient viral particles remaining
infectious and getting back into circulation by the thawing of ancient
permafrost layers."

This team has form for diligently digging up viruses in Siberia, with a previous
study detailing the discovery of a 30,000-year-old virus. Like the new record
holder, that was also a pandoravirus, a giant big enough to be visible using
light microscopy.

The revived virus has been given the name Pandoravirus yedoma, which
acknowledges its size and the type of permafrost soil that it was found in. The
researchers think there are many more viruses to find too, beyond those that
only target amoebas.

Many of the viruses that will be released as the ice thaws will be completely
unknown to us – although it remains to be seen how infectious these viruses
will be once they're exposed to the light, heat and oxygen of the outdoor
environment. These are all areas that could be investigated in future studies.

Virologist Eric Delwart from the University of California, San Francisco, agrees
that these giant viruses are just the start when it comes to exploring what lies
hidden beneath the permafrost. Though Delwart wasn't involved in the current
study, he has plenty of experience resuscitating ancient plant viruses.

"If the authors are indeed isolating live viruses from ancient permafrost, it is
likely that the even smaller, simpler mammalian viruses would also survive
frozen for eons," Delwart told New Scientist.

The research has not yet been peer-reviewed but is available on bioRxiv.