'Zombie' viruses are buried in the Arctic permafrost. European researchers warn they may increasingly be unleashed as global warming thaws it.
a vast store of ancient viruses, according to a team of European researchers, who say they have found 13 previously unknown pathogens that had been trapped in the previously frozen ground of Russia’s vast Siberian region.found one virus that they estimated had been stranded under a lake more than 48,500 years ago, they said, highlightingThe same team of French, Russian and German researchers previously isolated ancient viruses from the permafrost and published their findings in 2015.
they published last month on the BioRxiv website, a portal where many scientists circulate their research before it is accepted in a scientific journal.“Every time we look, we will find a virus,” said Jean-Michel Claverie, a co-author of the study and an emeritus professor of virology at Aix-Marseille Université in France, in a phone interview. “It’s a done deal. We know that every time we’re going to look for viruses, infectious viruses in permafrost, we are going to find some.
The risks from viruses pent up in the Arctic are worth monitoring, several scientists said. Smallpox, for example, has a genetic structure that can hold up under long-term freezing, and if people stumble upon the defrosted corpses of smallpox victims, there is a chance they could be infected anew. Other categories of virus — such as the coronaviruses that cause covid-19 — are more fragile and less likely to survive the deep freeze.
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