The past decade has revealed some exciting new discoveries in the field of virology. Several giant viruses have been discovered that are 100 times the size of viruses we’re familiar with, and they have unique genomes that hint at another domain of life (in addition to bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes). Although these viruses still require the host’s machinery for energy, they are changing the way we think about viruses and whether they’re living or non-living.
Ed Yong published an article in Nature News yesterday about the newest giant virus: Pithovirus sibericum, recovered from 30,000 year old permafrost. This virus is still infectious to amoebas and is the largest found so far. The genome inside isn’t as tightly packed as other viruses, but what that means for function of the virus is unknown.
These viruses aren’t known to infect humans. However, I’ve read comments about whether these resurrected viruses could become a problem for human health, especially in light of climate change. What do you think?
Great post! The /r/science community of Reddit has been up in arms about this all day.
Obviously, there’s no human health risk for this particular virus. However, this is a ‘proof of concept’ that viral particles can remain infectious after being frozen…even after its host has continued evolving over millenia.
So what does this mean for human health? For years, scientists and public officials have been concerned about the gravesites of smallpox victims that must litter the frozen landscapes. Here’s a great article from 2008 that covers all aspects of the topic. To give you an idea…it closes with this quote:
From my perspective…it would require a union of geographers, historians, epidemiologists, meteorologists, and modellers just to identify regions of increased risk of reemergence. Then we’d have to send biohazard construction crews to locate and dispose of anything they find…regardless of whether it tests positive for what they’re looking for.
It seems like a fun project to work on…but I’m not sure who would fund it!
On an unrelated note…I’d bet that the “giant” descriptor played a huge role in how far this story has travelled.
Here’s a blog article I found on the topic of unearthing frozen graves and using DNA to identify bacterial pathogens…note that they were not focused on pathogen viability or viral pathogens.